


Drafts & Chaotic Stuff

by virginea



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, discreetly adds the tag but on a different date so as not to cause any inconvenience
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 24,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26293801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginea/pseuds/virginea
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 90
Kudos: 38





	1. Bran (VII) - The Smoke After The Fire

**Bran (VII)**

**_Winterfell_ **

_The queen's face contorted as a new wave of pain that began in her lower back spread to her limbs, eliciting an almost animal screech out of her that could be heard through the long corridors of her castle. Servants and passersby whispered what they should rebuke as soon as the thought crossed their minds. She was dying. Or the price was not making it._

_"Please, my Queen, a little bit more," a young woman encouraged her. The young Queen responded by biting her._

_The only thing she would do is stretching out her slender fingers, trying to reach the tea at her bedside._

_“Not now, my Queen,” the Maester told her, removing the cup out of reach._

_She flopped back on her bed, her various pillows cushioning her fall._

_"My queen, the child comes in a bad position. I am so sorry," the maid lamented with a whimper. She knew what happened in these cases._

_"Just...pull it out of me," Sansa responded, exhausted and resigned._

_Being the daughter of a woman who had had almost no problem bringing children into the world, Sansa had thought that it would surely be an easy affair bringing her own. She hadn’t counted on this scenario. Her pride has blinded her._

_"Bring your hand," the Maester indicated to one of the young maidens assisting the childbirth. She approached apprehensively, fearing what was being asked of her. “Put your hand there–”_

_"No!”_

_"Yes. You will! Your Queen demands you!” he replied, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He was one of the few people who still hold great affection for her. In addition, he knew the chaos that would be unleashed if mother and child did not come out of that chamber alive._

_Immediately the woman obeyed, face distorted with disgust._

_He shifted into that tender mind that had already awaken. He remembered when he did this with Hodor so long ago. It was always dangerous but it was the only way to keep the boy here as his mother fought to bring him to the world._

_“Oh, gods,” the girl servant cried as she felt the twisted flesh in her hand. “I think it is done,” she said while weeping._

_He saw glimpses of a mind there, weaker than the usual._

_Quiescent, the boy came out of his mother's womb making no sound and no move. The Maester looked at this scene apprehensively but not because of his quietude but because instead of thigh shut eyes of a newborn, this child had wide-open eyes and them abnormally turned._

_Everyone in the room remained still beholding this hideous view._


	2. Tormund (V) - TSAF

**Tormund (V)**

**Beyond the Wall**. 

"Um, well, a dragon is like…” Tormund hesitated as he struggled to find the right words that could describe what those creatures looked like. “…like a giant chicken!” he came up with for some reason. 

Jorian and Missella cocked their little heads in confusion. He could only imagine what those minds were thinking.

“Mama says chickens can’t fly because they are too big and their wings too small. But she _flies_ _the dragon_!” Jorian grumbled at spotting the lapse in Tormund’s poor reasoning. He only chuckled -he didn’t know what else he was supposed to say.

He and Munda took it upon themselves to instruct the children of the settlement to be careful with the words they uttered near the dragon-wolf children. Ever since they found out about the existence of dragons, they'd been zealously querying for more knowledge. 

Tormund knew it was unwise to leave that to chance, given their parents' complicated story. In an old conversation with Jon, Tormund learned that the Dragon Queen did not want her children to know of the beasts. He believed that it was a mistake to deny them that part of their blood but the decision was not in him, then he kept his thoughts to himself and followed their entreaty. 

“Where is the dragon?” Missella asked. Although less obstinate than Jorian when it comes to prying, she was as determined as her brother to find out more about the secret they had just stumbled upon.

Dalya repeatedly babbled a strange unintelligible word that sounded like the word Dragon as she hopped on Tormund's lap. 

"He fled," he replied, holding the girl under her armpits while moving his left right up and down to follow her pace. He was waiting for the food in the bowl to cool enough not to burn the youngling mouth. Or fingers. Jorian and Missella were scattered on the floor with their wooden toys.

Jorian spared him a doubtful stare. "Where?"

"To a mountain," Tormund responded absently.

"To _the_ mountains?"

Both children opened their eyes with amazement, looking out the window toward the mountains surrounding the village.

"Um, no, not those mountains. Another mountain."

Their shoulders slumped in disappointment.

As Tormund concentrated on feeding the youngest -who in return wanted to feed him as well- he listened to bits and pieces of the conversation between the two older siblings.

 _Fucking Crow and Dragon Mama_ , he cursed, thinking about how he has not spent this much time not even with his own children. Tormund decided that the next time he saw Jon, he would cut off his little pecker so that it wouldn't spawn anymore.

"Mama and Papa went looking for him!" Jorian enthusiastically surmised.

"Hmm" Missella only said. She put a finger to her pursed mouth and narrowed her eyes in a thoughtful manner.

“We have a dragon, Missella!” he said again trying to share his overflowing emotion.

"Dragons breathe fire, Jorian,” she whispered as if it were a secret, “What if he burns us?” she asked him then with a voice that gave away she was only feigning appall.

“Don’t be stupid, Missella, Mama is the Dragon Queen, she flies dragons! That's Gragard said! She won’t let him eat us!”

"Don't call me stupid, you arse!" she chided him angrily while giving him an aggressive shove.

"Hey, stop there!" Tormund intervened before it could escalate. It was enough having to deal with the slip of the tongue of his grandchildren. “Those are forbidden words. You don’t say that!”

An icy look from the mother of dragons had been enough for Tormund to learn to moderate his dirty chatter in front of her children. But Daenerys was long gone and he was back to old habits no matter how much he tried to contain himself.

Not surprisingly, it was Jorian who questioned the injustice of being the only children in the whole village who were not allowed to curse.

“Why not? Fel, Gregard, and Sigurd are allowed!” he said.

 _Well, ask your Mama_.

“But you are not. End of the story.”

He took a deep breath and placed Dalya atop the table. Her legs dangled in the air and she took a handful of food to her mouth and chewed on her porridge. Then he heard the soft whimper coming from where Jorian and Missella where.

 _For fuck’s sake_ , he cursed in his mind, this time, as he looked at them conflicted with himself. He made sweet and sensitive Missella cry. She opened her mouth and let out a boisterous cry while rubbing one of her eyes with the back of her hand. Jorian frowned and patted his sister, saying words of consolation as he encouraged her to rise from their place on the floor. In this sudden togetherness, they made their way to their rooms.

Tormund stared after them, guilt burning in his chest.

“My dragon will burn your arse!” Jorian shouted at him before slapping the door.


	3. Arya's I & II -  A Queen's Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning 🔔🔔🔔, A Queen's Duty, at the moment, is a No Jonerys Endgame story.

**Arya (I)**

**King's Landing**

Sandor bangs the head of the Lannister soldier against a wall and Arya grimaces at the sound of its blast inside the helmet. 

"Was it really necessary?" she asks him with a rough tone. 

Sandor looks at her over the shoulder when he growls back his response, "I'd ask you the same thing."

Arya takes a deep breath and keeps moving forward, her hood on tight in case anyone recognizes her, although she didn't think that was possible. Not even the Northern soldiers did. Ahead of them, people crowd to get a place inside Red Keep and she feels the urge to tell them that this is the last place they should seek refuge. Had no one ever heard of Harrenhall?

The outburst and confusion helped her and Sandor to move forward without further consequence. They have chosen one of the streets parallel to the main, where the soldiers of the Golden Company march in all their futile splendor, as they wait for the imminent arrival of the Dragon Queen. 

"Aren't you scared?" she asks Sandor, looking over at him. "Dragons are fire made flesh."

She knows that at the Battle of Winterfell, they fought with fire left and right as if she were just another battle partner. This was a whole different matter, Arya tells herself, influenced by her sister's very conviction that the taking of King's Landing would be a bloody and ruthless event.

"I don't feel anything," he replies. 

Strange, she thinks. Arya could swear this was all about his brother. His revenge. As it is for her, isn't it? It is not the time to hesitate, she has to finish with Cersei because everything depends on that. While the Dragon Queen now has the same goal, Arya doesn't care what happens to the war for the Iron Throne. That is a fight that does not concern her.

Besides, Jon was sure of the goodness of his queen despite Sansa and her own misgivings about her. If anything, Arya believes she is helping to solve the matter quickly. 

**Arya (II)**

The moment the dragon flies over Red Keep, she thinks that was it, that her revenge was lost and she had come too late. However, when the Dragon Queen breaks through the gates to deconcentrate Cersei's human shield, that's really when Arya speeds up and thinks she must run and reach her goal before time runs out.

"Arya, wait!" Sandor shouts at her. 

She is running now, desperately toward it. Her goal. The last name on her list. However, a strong blow stops her step. It's a blast. She looks up and sees a large green flame before a shadow looms over her and knocks her out.

When she wakes up everything around her is chaotic. She has been saved from a structure in the walls falling on her thanks to Sandor swooping in to protect it. 

"I told you to wait, stupid girl!" he chided her.

Arya ignores him again and stands up to watch as the majestic castle that stands above them is swallowed up by flames as the dragon lashes its body against it as if it is trying to bring it down.

"What is he doing?" she wonders. "What is **_she_** doing?"

A hand on her shoulder snaps her out of her thoughts. She looks at it first and then at Sandor, whose face is also shocked. _**The fire, of course.**_

"Arya," he says her name apprehensively.

"Sandor," she replies. The two still stare into the green and red flames melting into the darkness of smoke and ruins.

Small shapes escape from that fire dressed in gray and blue. She frowns when she recognizes the Unsullied, who are exiting from the building towards the main courtyard where the people who have not yet escaped gather. _What's going on?_ she asks herself the same question over and over again.


	4. Daenerys III - A Queen's Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning 🔔🔔🔔, A Queen's Duty, at the moment, is a No Jonerys Endgame story.

**Daenerys (III)**

Her hands clenched tightly on Drogon's spines, as she contemplated how easy it had been to finish off the Iron Fleet of Euron Greyjoy and the scorpions on the walls of King's Landing. She didn't even need her allies' soldiers, her own, nor Viserion or Rhaegal. All she had needed to regain the throne of her family was Drogon. 

Enraged, she lands her last living child on the walls that surround and protect Red Keep. People down there shouted and run away in fear. She can feel her own anger gathering in her chest in the form of fire and blood, thinking that nothing has been worth it the pain and sacrifices. She wants to destroy, to release all her wrath on the stronghold of her family that was invaded by those who had destroyed them. She is more a dragon than a person right there. She is the Dragon Queen and nothing else.

Resolved, she swallows hard and moves toward the walls that face a central street. People now seek to flee.

"Move," Daenerys orders these people, hovering with Drogon careful to crush anyone. While she doesn't feel anything for them, she needs them to leave to finish her duty. With a hard blow on his tail, Drogon manages to destroy the gates. She once again commands her son to soar above them and toward Red Keep, hovering over the castle like a raven stalking its prey. And like a rotting corpse pricked to watch maggots wriggle within, Dany sees all of these people as nothing more than remnants of a long rot.

She lets out a cry that no one down there will hear, like the cry that preceded those days and no one has come to appease. It is done. She no longer wants to keep fighting to show that she is different just to get the same result. She is sick of fighting.

With this in mind, Dany searches for the precise place to land, remembering the past when she used to do the same at the pyramids of Meereen. Even with its savagery and cruelty, Daenerys wished she had stayed there. She wished she had devoted the rest of her life to something worthwhile instead of this futile dream that has taken everything from her.

When her eyes land on an unprotected entrance, a wide-open window, Dany commands Drogon to come closer and allow her - at last - to enter Red Keep. He squeals in disagreement, perhaps feeling and fearing what she is up to.

Dany sobs and gives his warm scales a tender kiss, apologizing to him for this absurd decision. And it is that she no longer has anything to live for, and only one last duty to fulfill.


	5. Jon II - A Queen's Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning 🔔🔔🔔, A Queen's Duty, at the moment, is a No Jonerys Endgame story.

**Jon (II)**

**Winterfell**.

Every day since that day, he has heard the door of his chamber open followed by the footsteps of some daring soul hitting the cold floor. And he knows it is cold because it is where he has spent most of his time, finding shelter in the crudity of it as the chill of the environment envelops him and the harshness of the stone brushes his skin. Jon could drive his mind into another container and let himself be there until nothing remained of him but dust, but he didn't believe himself worthy of that. He does not deserve the tranquility of ignorance. He knows that sooner or later, his **tormentors** will come looking for him. And in that moment, Jon understands by such all those who in some way or another had contributed to plunge him into this pain.

"Jon?"

His eyes are closed but he squeezes them tightly as his entire body evaporates in a river of **boiling water**. He swallows hard to wet his dry throat but is so sore there is no use in trying.

" **Leave** ," he barely answers to this one tormentor of his he called his sister once. _**Don't you dare to come any closer**_ , he would've warned if he had could.

"Jon, we need to talk," she insisted with a soft and trembling voice, showing herself as **vulnerable** as the day he saw her again after the vicissitudes that had separated them. He has loved her so much that he has put aside everything that kept creating a gap between them. And in his **naivety,** he has given her the knife with which she stabbed him to death.

"Leave," he **begs** this time like a child being beaten to the ground, unable to stand up to defend himself. This is what tormentors do.

There is silence for a moment but he cannot unwind knowing that she is out there, waiting to continue tormenting him. 

"It has been over a moon..." she says confirming his suspicions. 

Jon has longed to die but whatever prevents it, is a powerful force against his flagging resolve. Another person in his place would already be dead. Someone else luckier than him.

With a raspy voice scratching at his throat, he gives her one last warning.

"Leave, Sansa. Leave. If you ever had a shred of respect for me, you'll leave now."

He hears her deep breath and then footsteps that precede a door slamming shut.

***

Jon learned about it as soon as he set foot in White Harbor. News travels faster than people, much more those that have to do with King's Landing. He had expected to hear from it but had not anticipated that it would happen in such a way or that the outcome would be that. Although being honest, Jon now clearly sees how his inattention and the disregard for the matter played out.

Dany is dead. Dany is gone forever. She died alone and not even Drogon could save her. Every time he remembers it a muffled scream escapes from his chest and he writhes in pain inside the wardrobe where he has hidden himself from the world. There, next to her precious Iron Throne, she found death whilst he was miles away, although nothing would have made a difference because by his own volition Jon had decided to move away. The rest of his life he will have to carry the regret of having had the opportunity to avoid it and have allowed that chance to pass before his eyes, while he remained inert.

 _Why?_ He wonders...he complains to her. _Why did you have to do it? Did you want to hurt me like I have hurt you? Was the Iron Throne so important you couldn't see anything else?_ But then he would remember that she sought out a way out through him and through the people she trusted and saved just to receive a slammed door on the face. It is his fault as it is theirs. 

He needed time but she was running out of it. The others...they were like crows rounding a feast of dead bodies. Only thing she had left were her thousands of loyal soldiers that followed her to death and even there they took her with them. He will never see her again. He couldn't say goodbye. According to Ser Davos' letter she was crushed by that infernal building and her body carried out of it by Grey Worm. Drogon left because his mother has died and he has nothing here. Jon himself feels has nothing left anymore. Daenerys, his Dany, his love and his blood died as he did little to help her out of that destiny. 


	6. A Sneak Peek Into The Fluffy Epilogue That Was Promised - TSAF

"Mama," a thin voice called out.

Dany was crossing the corridor toward the nursery when her little boy Ameron took her by surprise. She crouched down to be at his level, reaching out to sweep away a lock of unruly dark hair that had topped onto his forehead. Like every time she saw any of her children, her heart fluttered.

"Sweetling," she said, smiling at her son. _You were supposed to cut his hair, Jon._

"I have to show you something," the boy said urgently, and there she noticed that he was carrying a small book under his arm. She wrinkled her nose knowing what was coming. "Jorian says there are monsters on the sea. We cannot go there! And look what I’ve found."

 _Others take you, Jorian_.

Ameron opened his book where there was an illustration of a kraken. From the moment he learned to read, he had never taken his eyes off the long texts that hid the pages of the volumes in their library. His enthusiasm sometimes ended up clouding his attention.

Dany sighed but listened to his reasons. While doing this, she got up and together they walked slowly to the nursery.

"There are not monsters on the sea,” Daenerys tried to calm him. “Your brother is trying to scare you. Do not let him."

"Are you sure? Here says…"

"I am, my love,” she cut him off, opening the room door and letting him cross it first. There, babbling as he played with her plump little legs was her youngest son, Zae. “Besides, not all monsters are...monsters. What you call a monster can be just an animal. Like Ghost." A smile spread across her face when the baby noticed her presence and began to yelling to get her attention. “Hi,” Daenerys greeted him, approaching the crib to pick him up and help him to his feet.

"Ghost is a wolf!" Ameron protested, still behind her, insisting.

Daenerys giggled when Zae clenched his fist on a strand of her hair to bring it to his mouth. She gently removed it.

"A dire wolf,” she replied to Ameron, sitting in the chair that rested at the side of the crib. _Fine_ , she thought to herself, carefully planning her next move. _Very well_.

Zae instinctively leaned against her breast, squeezing the fabric of her dress to hasten her to remove what was preventing him from feeding.

“Some people that have never seen the north, believe them monsters," Daenerys continued speaking with Ameron whilst she settled Zae on her left breast.

"They are not!" he shouted a little bit too loud.

She shushed him with a smile, to lessen the severity of her scolding. Ameron could be intense at times when it came to his many terrors. And Jorian knew how to play with them.

"Fetch that stool and sit in front of me, let's fix that hair," she instructed him.

His eyes widened apprehensively.

“Papa said it’s fine!”

Daenerys sighed.

 _"What is wrong with his hair?"_ she imagined Jon's voice questioning her, again.

It was not that she found something wrong with it, but because of the texture of it, at the end of the day she had to wash it even more than his sisters'.

"I just want to tie it up," she explained to reassure him. It’s not that long yet, she reasoned with herself as she watched Ameron drag the stool she used to raise her legs.

“Jorian says it’s where our strength is,” he said as he sat with his back to her, having carefully place his book to the floor.

As much as Jorian enjoyed to mess up with Ameron’s innocence every now and then, Dany also knew that he enjoyed the fact that his little brother had him in a place of high regard and everything he said was sacred word to Ameron.

With a nimble movement, she managed to gather all of Ameron's hair into a bun. His gray eyes looked at her for a moment and he smiled before she put a kiss on his cheek. 


	7. Rough Draft Scene - The Storm After The Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah that will be the title of the sequel of The Great Alliance and The Smoke After The Fire.

The procession of the King Beyond the Wall, contrary to what was during the arrival of Daenerys with the Unsullied and Dothraki, was much better received on the way to Winterfell. Tyrion curses under his breath as soon as he sees the long, colorful lines of soldiers he brings with him and repeats it then he spots Jon himself with his children.

Sansa beside him also realizes what he is doing, nervously moving the hand resting on her cane. She was so stubborn to want to go up there on the battlements, but he understood it; Those children came directly to threaten her crown.

 _Those children came to threaten the stability of the entire Westeros_.

"Are we sure those children are half wildlings?" she asks.

Tyrion lets out a sigh.

"What difference would it make? Take a look,” he says, approaching the edge. From his position, he can glimpse two dark heads and two silver heads. There is one missing, he noted. And the children's mother is nowhere. "You have two Starks and two Targaryens, anyone would say that is enough to confirm that your brother conceived legitimate heirs to whatever crown they wanted to reclaim."

At some point, Tyrion came to think that the fact that Jon was a criminal in the eyes of the kingdoms, would suffice to rule out any problems regarding Brandon's legitimacy, after all that was why he had been elected over Jon.

He remembers Varys mentioning how people are drawn to him, and now he sees it with his own eyes. Wildlings, northerners, and thanks to the lack of control in the southern kingdoms, there is also people from there between his lines.

"Jon is a criminal in the eyes of the Realm. He broke a promise, murdered his kin, and the queen to whom he was sworn to–” Is Sansa futile attempt to argue. 

Tyrion snorts.

"Of all the people, are you really the one saying that, your grace?"

Of course, the Queen in the North never revealed to her subjects about her indiscretion fifteen years ago. At this point, he feels pity for her, as he used to feel towards Cersei in her later years as well: desperate and lonely holding on to a crown that was never meant to be hers.

And like Cersei, her vision is short-sighted. Perhaps for the northerners, it would be enough for them to be the children of Jon Snow, the hero who guaranteed independence by killing the Dragon Queen, whom they never wanted anyway. But for the rest of the kingdoms, those silver-headed children were a thunderous statement.

The Targaryen are alive and thriving


	8. Daenerys (XXXIV) - TSAF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason this is taking me ages is because I'm writing a lot of scenes of further chapter scenes in order for the these previous ones to make sense.

**Daenerys (XXXIV)**

**Braavos.**

Drogon purred softly as she stroked his gigantic snout. Then he blinked slowly as his eyes stilled on her, conveying the so needed calm and affection she returned in the form of sweet nothings she whispered to him like a secret only they would understand. She didn’t think there could be a fiercer bond between a rider and their dragon like that of them. And it had taken years of estrangement for her to realize how much she needed that part of her. But just as her bond with Drogon was essential to feel whole, that bond that bound her to her children also cried out for them.

She’s been resilient hitherto, enduring each one of the days that seemed eternal with herself alone with her thoughts of them. Jorian and Missella’s seventh nameday were to be in a moon from now. Dalya’s babes’ days were to come to an end. And she wasn't there to witness it all. Memories she wouldn’t be able to make up for. _They must be forgetting about me_ , she used to think bitterly with a burning hole in her chest.

Daenerys sighed regretfully as Drogon's muzzle nudged at her trying, to encourage her. Suddenly she felt his tender purr turn into a low growl underneath her recumbent chest. She blinked her eyes open and found Jon standing at the feet of the stone stairs that led to the backshore beneath the house of the Sealord, where the mists rolled in off the waters and Drogon could be in disguise.

Although one of the coolest days, he wore a light garment consisting of a dark-brown leather tunic with a simple black tabard and a bare belt. On the other hand, Daenerys was clad in a wool and cotton dress lined with a fur shoulder shawl joint in her front by an iron chain that hugged her shoulders blades and back and sides of her neck while delicate embroidery ran along its length. 

Through the bond came feelings that battled her own; rage and rejection that she repressed as soon as her resolution overcame that of her son. Her heart fluttered at the mere sight of him and Drogon snorted in what seemed like a weary gesture. He leaned back to give them room.

She walked over and met him halfway in a tight embrace. 

“He’ll neither forgive nor forget,” Jon could tell. Dany looked up and shrugged it off.

“Good luck he’s not your mount,” she quipped. His hand on her cheek slid down to touch her swollen lip with his fingertip in a sultry manner that would have her burning hadn't been because she saw his eyes didn't spark with usual joy. _Something was off_. "What happened?"

"I warged into Ghost," he straight out replied.

Dany pulled away a bit with a confused expression on her face as she blinked rapidly out of daze. Whether or not he understood her reaction, he held his grip on her arm.

"Were you careful?" She questioned him, referring to the bracelet that thwarted any magical bond. He must have had it removed. After assuring her that he had been cautious, Jon led her by the arm to a near retaining wall for them to take a seat and began to tell her what was happening at home.

He began by letting her know that the children were safe and that there was always a watchful eye on them, be it Munda, Tormund, or Dalra. 

"Dalra, the young archer?" Daenerys asked, raising an eyebrow tentatively. 

"Aye," he answered oblivious of her suggesting tone. "There's something else."

The moment the information leaves his mouth, she feels her heart in her throat.

"Tormund did what?" she asked him bewildered. 

"Some of those children know about us. It was only a matter of time," he tried to explain. 

"Do you know what Tormund is telling them?"

"Whatever it is, they seem rather charmed by its apotheosis," he said with a slight hint of contentment she couldn't find in herself. He stroked her cheek and added: "They'll know. Sooner or later. Everything of it."

"What will they think of us then?" Dany snapped at him. 

"They'll know we are only humans," Jon answered. 

"Well, that's farcical at this point," she blurted out. She stood up and passed both hands through her hair. "We have to return. It does really matter if _they_ just learn the truth and we face whatever it comes with it?"

Jon returned a look of displeasure but didn't mean to cross her.

"We will do what you say."

She scoffed, feeling themselves back again at another time. 

"And you? _What do you say_?" she insisted. 

He huffed and and looked away. After a moment of silence, he finally spoke: "I only know I'm far off from being the same man who always did the honorable thing."

He didn't look in any way upset at blurting that out.

"Your plan with Yara. What made you-"

Before she could complete her question, he jumped out and stood before her, cupping her face and forcing her to stare at his eye. 

"I've saved them all by giving away my love and my children," he put a peck on her lips. A strong grip on her that almost felt like another apology. When he pulled away, he said: "Now I'm giving them war in the name of my love and my children."

Jon looked at her reassured. He gave her another quick kiss and returned to sit nonchalantly until she joined him again. 

It still left her stunned to be in that situation after all they had lived through. It sounded as if they were both willing to make true what had been imposed on them through deception and betrayal. 

She was willing to be ruthless with her enemies and he to retrace his steps to take from his siblings what they had achieved at the expense of him. 

Dany recalled herself when they had barely met again and how reluctant she was about their love and their life together. At a certain point she had just settled, believing that because he was the father of her children, that was the way things should be. She let him know this knowing it was going to hurt him but didn't care. She didn't care about anything but her children then. 

When Jon allowed her to behead Glover, her frustration converged with his desire for revenge and that union in the remembrance that their love could be stronger than the damage of their enemies.

Thinking of this, Dany reached for his hand and tenderly kissed the back of it before bringing it to her cheek where she rested it as she closed her eyes. She knew that they were not doing well by dwelling on feelings of resentment and remorse, and at that moment a desire to convey to him all the love she felt came over her.

When she opened her eyes, she found Jon staring at her curiously.

"Come to Volantis with me," she told him. 


	9. Another Sneak Peek

"Woah. What's that for?" Was Jorian's response as soon as his father hand smacked the back of his neck. It was light-delivered and intended to startle him, which it succeeded doing. All his sons but Zae had his eyes and when they looked at him this way -frowning and appalled- Jon swore he could see himself in them. 

"Monsters on the sea? Just about our journey?" he reproached him.

"He won't leave me alone!" Jorian justified before clicking his tongue disdainfully and rubbing the back of his neck. Then he groaned. "Seven hells, you are becoming a cantankerous crone!"

"This cantankerous crone will sent your arse to guard the West Watch if you insist on this behavior," Jon warned him. "I am speaking seriously. Your brother is just a child. He respects you and believes in you. Do not take advantage of him."

The reminder seemed to work because his oldest son looked down at his bowl and didn't reply. Jorian could be tricky at times but he never crossed the line between troublesome and cruel. Sure he used to sneak out from every so often and outwit his parents authority just for the sake of it, but he knew how to heed the indication that his behavior was overflowing. _So far_.

"Papa!" another voice came from behind and startled both. It was Dalya's. She rushed in so quickly her whole form was more like a ghost soaring the halls of a crypt.

Though spending the most of her time outside, she always looked neat as her mother for whom she inherited her looks -because Jon was sure that delicacy wasn't his. Although unlike Dany, their daughter seemed immune to the cold and harshness of the North and often relied only on a wool and yak fur dress for cover during her adventures abroad.

Dalya stood in front of them, in her arms something that first he did not know well what it was.

"Hey, what you gotten here?" Jon wondered as he took a closer look at what she had brought this time. _Oh no_ , he thought the instant he realized. "Where did you find that?"

A mountain wild cat's cub.

Dalya had made a habit of bringing injured animals and tending to them from time to time. A habit that did not make Daenerys too happy because if the healing did not work, Dalya's spirit remained broken for long days.

"It looks young," Jorian commented, craning his neck to peek from his place across the table.

"I think the mother abandoned him," Dalya said while stroking the fur of its emaciated form. 

"Oh. It must be ill," Jorian concluded, speaking through his full mouth and earning a stern look from his father.

"Can I keep it?" Dalya asked before he could unleash another string of reprimands. Her wide violet eyes and a hopeful smile.

Jon sighed. 

"Love-" he began to say but was again cut midsentence by Jorian's input.

"Mother would lose her head when she learns that you were up there again," he rightly told. 

"Jorian!" Lya exclaimed. 

"What? Mother always finds out."

"Mother always finds out about what?" Daenerys asked as she entered the room and both children stood still. She had Zaegar hooked on her waist while Ameron followed her close behind. "What is that?" 

Up there, as Jorian put it, meant the mountains slopes which was a forbidden place. Daenerys did not like children venturing outside the confines of the palisade of Wolves Den on their own. Jon respected her judgment on the matter but counted on the wolves to keep an eye on the children anyway. That and the fact that it was beyond the bounds of possibility to keep them from what was a the common lifestyle for every other youngling in the village. 

"Dalya, show me what you got there," Dany grew solemn in her request when none provided an answer. 

"It's a wild cat, Mama," Lya said in soft voice while staring at her father for help with pleading eyes. 

"They must be coming down from the mountains to stalk cattle," was his way of lightening the weight of the matter. Zae extended both arms towards him to be raised which Jon immediately did as he received a raised eyebrow and knowingly look from Daenerys. She passed the child and walked in the direction of Lya and her rescued animal. 

In the background, Jon heard Jorian groaning when Ameron took a seat next to him and began to chatter to him about something that was probably too interesting for the latter as too tedious for the other.

"I can take care of him or her. Please, Mama. He or she is alone...I need to protect-"

"It is sick, sweetling," Dany tried to explain.

"Ameron was sick too once. We didn't leave him alone because of that!" Dalya pointedly told. 

"I am not a wild cat. I am a boy!" Ameron protested. 

"We actually put you on a log on the forest for the pack to decide if you lived or you were eaten," Jorian joked. Ameron let out a gasp and looked to Jon for an answer. Jon shook his head from side to side to indicate that the statement was false. "Nobody respects a good story in this place."

Jon turned his attention back to Dalya and Daenerys. When they were together, it was like seeing two versions of the same person.

Dany grabbed the cub from Dalya's grasp and stroked its fur. The animal let out a grievous screech. 

"Oh," Daenerys said, "She's very thin," she looked up to him.

"She?" Lya asked her.

"You can tell because of the sound of her miaow. Aren't these things living on the slopes of the mountains?"

Although Dalya opened up her eyes and searched in her father for a way out, Jon knew Daenerys knew pretty well what she was asking. 

"You are not supposed to be up there," she admonished Dalya with the emaciated animal still on her lap. "You are allowed to take care of her. But you will also help with the cattle instead of your lessons with Val and your sister throughout the days left before our departure. _And no more climbing_. This time is final, Dalya."

"But, I..." she started whining but fell silent when both her parent stared at her sharply.

Dany retrieved the cat to Dalya. 

"Did you break..." Dany started asking when their daughter left as fast as she came. "your fast?" Daenerys stared again at him with a scowl. "Do not encourage her."

"I wasn't," Jon quietly crossed her. 

She squinted at him.

"Where is Missella?" Ameron cut in, before it could grow into an argument. 


	10. Confrontation with Daario

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, at least in the outline, is quite long so I leave a part of it here as a preview.

**Daenerys (XXXVI)**

**Volantis**

It was her scream that prevented the spear of the guard closest to her from piercing through Lyrissos to reach Daario. It was her stupidity in leaving Daario alive that had placed her in this situation.

It took all of her to keep her rage at bay. Her posture remained rigid atop her saddle as the guards had gathered on either side of her. Her eyes fixed on Daario's furious gaze. 

"What do you intend to achieve with this?" Daenerys asked him pointedly. Speaking the common tongue.

"I know it," he spat, seething, "I know it, Daenerys, I know he is with you! I know Jon Snow is with you!"

If her first instinct was to startle, she hid it very well.

"Nothing will you gain by killing him. Let him go," she replied, tone dismissing. He responded by holding Lyrissos tighter. "If you hurt him, Daario, I promise you, your death and that of your men will be painful."

He burst out laughing.

"Do it. Call Drogon. Got me killed. That won't help your cause, won't be? People know it now. Not only me. The great and mighty Mother of Dragons sharing a bed with her murderer!" Despite his anger, he continued to speak the common tongue. "I have always been loyal to you. I swore to serve you until the day you died and so you said and knew!"

Her mare fidgeted, moving her as well.

"What do you want? Gold? Power?" she asked him, knowing what he would answer.

"You know what I want," he replied as if reading her mind, cocking his head with an arrogant air.

" _That_ , I can't give you."

Daario growled and Lyrissos in his grip winced as the dagger began to graze the skin of his throat. At all times, keeping as calm as he could.

"You forgave Jorah!" he protested. "You forgave Jon Snow. How am I different? I loved you, I served you well while I could and I still love you!" his voice marked with a whimper at the end of the sentence.

"You're unhinged, Daario," was Daenerys' only response, her jaw clenched. As sorry as she was for putting Lyrissos in this situation, if he had to die so that the presence of Jon and the family they had formed together remained a secret, she would not hesitate twice to bathe them both, him and Daario, with fire.

What Daario said next made her change her mind.

"A short but well-built Westerosi man. My people saw him, Daenerys. I know from the dwarf that's Jon Snow!"

Her fists tightened on the mare's bridle.

"Daario, let him go. Please. I'll give you gold. Your men need it," she insisted then, knowing she would have to deal with the Second Sons now as well.

"And what _I need_!?" he bellowed.

"You know I don't like being browbeaten," Daenerys snapped, trotting forward and pushing the guards aside, staying above Daario's height. "If this is how you will act–"

"Give me a moment," Daario interrupted. "A moment to talk. I'll let him go and we'll have a conversation. _You owe me that much_.”

One guard didn't flinch when she made to move him aside. That guard was obviously Jon. From where she stood, she couldn't see what expression he had on his face, nor would she risk to give away something Daario could see a sign to further prove his conjecture.

Finally, Daenerys found herself impelled.

"Alright then," she said. 

**Jon (XXXVI)**

Adrenaline rushed through him as if he were on the battlefield again facing an impending onslaught. There was a time –and sometimes he still felt it– when he wished with all his might never to wield a sword again or to take the life of a person. That before he had lost the most important thing.

When they returned to the Temple, moving from the stables into the long tunnel-like passages, they made sure to part ways from Daario and Dany's advisor so that he and she could reunite. The moment she took his hand and dragged him into a dark room, Jon clung to her in a desperate embrace.

Only their heavy breaths echoed through the chamber.

"Are you alright?" he asked when they pulled away, cupping her face in his hands.

"I am. And you?" she responded, inspecting him with her eyes, as her hands traced his torso. No harm had been inflicted on him, the same concern showed in her amethyst eyes.

He looked up.

"Kill him," Jon said bluntly.

"He knows about–" she tried to argue but it wasn't enough for him.

"I'm going to kill him then," he said.

Daenerys stiffened in a reaction that baffled him. 

"Jon, please. Listen to me. He knows _who knows you_ by sight."

"I don't care," Jon answered firmly. "I saw the way he looks at you. He wants you and nothing will stop him until he has what he wants." And with a stern look, he warned, "I will stop him."

Dany shortened the distance between them, her hands forcing him to look into her eye.

"Listen to me! If that person goes with the information, soon everyone will know and everything we have fought to keep guarded, our family, our children, our people...everything may be put at peril!"

He couldn't believe what he was hearing, awakening in him a feeling of disgust and loathing that he hadn't felt in a long time.

She must have noticed it because she closed her eyes in a gesture that denoted abjection and regret.

"Jon, please, I beg you," she whispered, her voice fragile, brow furrowed, and teary eyes. "Trust me please."

He lowered his gaze but not out of outrage like a few moments ago but because he felt he was failing her again, being the man whose impulses had cost her so much that she had to reduce herself to a pleading bundle of nerves coercing him into doing what he shouldn't hesitate to do. 

He was humiliated by his own behavior.

Instead of pulling away, ashamed of himself, as he would have done before, Jon pulled her against his chest and kissed her forehead, trying to convey with her his unconditional support and trust.

He still felt powerless for not being able to act against this spiteful lover of hers –to whom Jon would rather have dying a long and painful death simply for daring to want his wife for him. However, the rational part that still reigned his senses so often, made him put first the integrity of the trust they had for each other.

"I'll be there," he said, kissing again her brow and remaining there for a long moment. 

***

Jon mustered all the restraint in himself not to jump at Daario Naharis' throat as soon as he saw him again. The sellsword had that expression on his face that left nothing to the imagination –he fancied his wife. And it wasn't his infatuation the sole reason for Jon's utter aversion but also the fact Daario was willing to go that far in order to earn a space in Daenerys' life again. 

"You will not stand any closer," he warned as he traversed the room to stand in Daenerys' left side. She was sitting on a chair at a secure distance while Daario was standing across her. Jon paid no mind to the deathly stare the vindictive former lover of his wife spared him. Instead, he gritted his teeth when he directed himself at Daenerys. 

"I will never hurt you," Daario said, like a promise and like a matter of fact. 

"Not, certainly you won't," Daenerys answered; voice pitched with unwavering constraint. "But what you did today, I cannot let it past."

The sellsword cackled.

"I am a desperate man. I've done far worse for you," he implied, and then with a low voice, "Because I love you."

Again, he felt his stance stiffen.

Daenerys replied scoffing.

"All the men I've known in my life had wanted something from me. Viserys, Khal Drogo, Jorah, you, and Jon Snow. If I've learned something, is to be more careful towards your kind." 

Daario snorted. 

"But something is different than I remember. Something changed," he challenged her.

"Everything changed, Daario," Dany agreed.

A moment of silence. Daario looked around and for a moment Jon thought he was going to discover the deception.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, "There are not Unsullied, Dothrakis, and your other two children are dead." Daario gulped. "All because of that imp. And because of Jon Snow–"

"Who told you Jon Snow is with me?" Dany interrupted him.

"My men."

"And how they came with that information?" 

"Oh, _Dany_ ," he laughed and stirred up Jon's anger at hearing him calling her that way. "Experience has also taught me a great deal about survival."

"Whatever they told you, it's a lie."

"I know when you are ly–"

"That man was not Jon Snow. That man was my husband," Dany revealed, startling him enough to scowl though he tried to keep up with the farce. "Aegon Targaryen."

"Jon Snow. The man who killed you," the sellsword reminded her as if they were in the need of that. 

"Not exactly," was Dany's answer. Jon felt his chest clenching with the same old memory of his misdeed. On the contrary, she dwelled little on it. "Don't you remember what I told you the time we said farewell to each other?"

"The day you dismissed me."

"I told you I was going to marry."

"Yeah, to form an alliance. What alliance can you make with a man whose family stole you from what's yours?" He frowned and looked at her disgruntled. "It wasn't an alliance. You fell for him. The all-powerful mother of dragons! You lost everything for a man's love! I didn't have you as a silly maiden, Daenerys."

At that point, Jon's rage was boiling within him.

"Aren't you risking your life and everything you could've had for me?" 

"I've never said I wasn't such a man."

Jon looked between the two and noticed what he was trying to do. He was teasing her. But not only that. He wanted to amuse her, dig the joy out from her as –Jon guessed– they were accustomed on their lover's days. 

However, Dany's face looked solemn, as if she were well aware of his forethought intentions. She most likely was, having known him longer and deeper than him. 

Jon remembered the way she smiled and laughed just the night before when they talked about the Yak, and all the times her face beamed with merriment as they recalled their children's antics. As well as the whimpers and giggles he would obtain from her each time he brought her to the limits of the pleasure. That belonged to them and nobody –much less this poor excuse of a man– would steal that from them.

"You told me once, a Dragon Queen without dragons is not a queen," Dany's voice forced him to return to the present conversation. 

"I was trying to compel you. And if you had listened to me, Viserion, Rhaegal, Missandei, Jorah, and everyone else would've been today. Freya wouldn't exist. The people you freed–"

"The people you put in chains again!" Daenerys blurted out.

"I had no option!" he replied, forgetting all intended allure and returning to the maddening rampage that roused the guards and himself from their quiescent stances. Nonetheless, Dany waved a hand. 

"You told me Daario Naharis always has an option," she told him more calmly. "So, don't come before me with that lame excuse."

"Daenerys, have you seen that man? Have you ever stood in the same room?" he jumped forward but not enough to threaten the spared distance between them. "He almost caught you!"

"With your help," she reminded him.

"Because he's gotten the power!" His heavy breathing rumbled through the room. "What did you want me to do? My men were going to turn cloaks anyway. That's what sellswords do. We dance at the song of gold."

Daenerys remained silent.

"Were you even dead?" he asked after waiting for her to answer, which she finally didn't.

He found his answer in her silence.

"He killed you, and you still love him?" he asked her, face contorted and sickened. 

Daenerys got up with an undaunted face.

"I told you to bring Slaver's Bay back to me if you wanted to return to my ranks. But all you've brought me is excuses and grievances. I have believed you capable of greater achievements, Daario Naharis. Now you and all the men in your seedy company are going to be scorched because you couldn't understand that I was never going to be yours."

Jon's lips twitched with a hint of a smirk. His member did the same at the sight of his wife nonchalantly sentencing her former lover to die. That, until he realized that his wife's words elicited the same effect on the former lover.

"Then you are going to have to reduce the city to ashes, my Queen. Because the person who saw your husband is among the children of Mhysa." 


	11. Continuation of the confrontation with Daario

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait.

**Daenerys (XXXVII)**

She stood upright, trying not to let the seething rage coursing through her wash away her temperance. She had to get out of this with Daario and her informant silenced.

"I don't mean to impose you," Daario excused.

"You are exceedingly failing," Dany responded.

"Because you are being unreasonable!" he snapped at her. "You refuse to understand that I am the only man who has ever loved you just the way you are," he argued, increasingly erratic. "Right now you could set this city on fire and I would never do what the man you married has done to you!"

She was in conflict. Not because of Daario's empty words but because of Jon's presence right there. Even if she still carried conflicting emotions regarding what he did against her, it was rather the consequences of it that had Daenerys hesitating - it was obvious that her belated reappearance had given away she's been somewhere else for a long time.

Daario laughed bitterly then.

"Look at what you do to me, and I still love you." He fell on his knee then. "I have no weapons, they have been taken from me. But right here, in front of your guards, I once again swear my service and my heart-"

"I do not want-" she was about to say when he cut her off.

"And I know how to start destroying Freya." 

She blinked, confused. "What?"

"I can't go with less than two thousand men of dubious loyalty to Slaver's Bay and bring the cities back to you but I can be the stepping stone to it."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think a madman like Freya can command this campaign?" he asked with an eyebrow cocked. "How did you use to call your enemies in Meereen? _Shadows?_ You said you were in a war with shadows..."

At that moment, Dany regretted every moment they had shared together.

"Those shadows are everywhere Daenerys. Even here, in Volantis and in your so-called ruler council..."

"The way I see it, I'm losing. Why serve me?" Daenerys wondered. 

"Because I love you," he repeated, his expression mortified. "I don't know how else to make you understand."

 _Right_ , she thought. 

She let out a sharp breath and clenched the fabric of her dress between her fists.

"What do you know about the Iron Bank?" she inquired. 

"How do you think Freya is holding up?" He sounded encouraged. "I wouldn't start there. They have faceless men. More magic and things that don't make sense, but...there is a man." His eyes tightly shut as if making a great effort trying to remember him. "Tycho. Nestoris. Tycho Nestoris. I've seen him a couple of times around Freya."

"Your information is scarce like your time, Daario," Dany warned him.

With one knee still on the ground, and his elbow resting on the opposite knee, Daario looked carefree and insolent. Why did she ever find this attitude charming? She found herself wondering. 

"They told me you've settled in Braavos. It makes sense, now that I know what you've really been up to all this time," he only responded. He looked at her with penetrating eyes. "Let me fight for you. I serve you more on this side than on the opposite."

Daenerys scoffed at the unsubtle threat.

***

"You don't like the decision I've made," she inferred as she settled her accessories down the table of her chambers. All but the bracelet. She was talking to her husband, who unlike her was less careful to remove the decorative artifact around his neck that protected him from the sight of their enemies.

"I don't," he answered harshly before immediately changing his tone, "But I trust you."

His posture was stiff with the same frustration that translated into exhaustion on her. For now, a healthy distance kept them apart, he, at the side of the bed and she near the window. His heavy breathing and her sporadic sighs were their silent company.

"I have to find the person who knows who you are," Dany stated. "If I have to deal with Daario until that happens...so be it."

She could tell he didn't like it.

"And after that?" he asked her.

Dany sighed, pondering. "He will never allow me not needing him."


	12. Out of context smut (The Smoke After The Fire)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry the next chapter is taking so long. Again. LOL. 
> 
> This scene I wrote it a long time ago and it doesn't reveal much of the plot (I actually had to review it and remove bits of dialogue to make it more ambiguous). It is set in chapter 22. You can guess the context. Enjoy.

**Daenerys**.

She heard the screams but they faded as another plethora of colorful emotions overwhelmed her senses. Passion, desire, anger, pain, sadness, love. It was too much at once for one person. Luckily Jon didn't seem to be far away, taking her with him to that void where they were in free fall.

He let out a guttural sound as he struggled to finish undoing the leather ties on the gown she had chosen just for him, taking the away dagger hanging from her scabbard and cutting them without much care. 

Far from feeling offended or impressed, she continued to bite and kiss the skin of his neck and fumbling for the ties of his trousers. She quivered and let out a loud whimper when in a sudden movement he finished splitting the dress in half, falling to his knees next to the material that unveiled her naked body. He did not get up again, staying on his knees gawking at her, sliding his gaze from bottom to top until he reached her eyes, where she was sure he would find naught but the sincere devotion she felt for him, that way of loving him bare of all prudence and reason.

His hands went to hold on her hips as hers cradled his face.

"Did you really think I would give myself to another when I already gave myself to you for good?" she asked him, every word coated with sadness. 

Although she knew what answer he would give, he took her by surprise when he hid his face resting on her lower belly. She buried her hands in his hair and forced him to raise his face to look her straight in the eye.

"I am yours, and you are mine," she said fiercely and she felt him gently digging his fingers into the skin of her hips as she spoke the words. "And we were made for each other."

The grief in his eyes shifted back to an intense desire and soon his mouth went to kiss her where she needed him the most. 

**Jon**.

Her body flailed like a flag in the wind and he knew she will resist no longer on her feet. He lay down on the fur on his back and guided her to sit so that her cunt could be atop his face and thus continue with his ministrations. He drank from her like a thirsty man in the desert, pushing his fingers inside and out her while he kissed and suck on her sensitive swell. He edged her to the limit and leave her there, whining without inhibitions of any kind before bringing her back in a mischievous way of displaying his dominance over her. 

As if hearing his thoughts, she let her upper body fall on top of him, and soon her hands wrapped around his cock. A ragged moan escaped from Jon's mouth when she brought her mouth over him, the first touch of her tongue making his head hit to the ground. As her hair tickled his tights he muffled a groan when she engulfed him in her wet heat. 

She pulled herself away and crawled up to face him, meeting in a gentle kiss with parted lips, running their tongues back and fourth together. Her eyes fluttered open and he saw in them again the same look of tenderness and bare affection she gave him when their love had just begun. It made him shiver and upended his heart. Before he could say it, she silenced him with a kiss.

"I love you, too," she said against his lips, "But don't get soft now."

A rush of adrenaline shot through his body as he remembered what had brought them there at the beginning, and the primal instinct that had ruled his senses until a few minutes ago returned to claim his sanity.

He propelled himself upward and flipped them over, making her lay on her back while her legs spread on instinct. Between intermittent kisses and caresses, she helped him finish undressing. 

**Daenerys**.

Whatever had taken possession of him, she made no attempt to counter him. Instead, she became docile and pliant beneath his touch, keeping him attached to her when both were near release. 

"Is this what you want?" he managed to say with a hoarse voice. 

She didn't answer him and instead pulled him down and kissed him as he grabbed that hand and pinned her both arms down effortlessly while his other arm lifted up her leg above his shoulders so he could plump into her at a better angle. Graceful fingers found their way to her swelling bud and she was seeing the stars while gasping against his mouth. Not long after, he was racing before coming to slow but hard motion, spurting out his seed into her. Dany did not care if it blossomed or not but she was resolved to take the chance and stop being afraid of what the future might be.

Afterward, cold air blew and bodies ached for the exertion. She peered at her trashed clothes and slapped his shoulder in reprimand. 

***

Their bed was taken over by strange little bodies that huddled between them, Jorian snuggled into her chest and the girls closer to Jon. Dalya was the only one awake, her violet eyes staring at Dany with open curiosity. With the arm that was resting under Jorian, she reached for her smooth cheek to caress her. The girl smiled for a moment before giving in to the heaviness of her eyelids and falling into a deep slumber.

"Give it time," Jon said, whispering the words. "She is stubborn like her mother."

Dany brought her hand on Dalya's cheek to Jon's shoulder, giving it a gentle pinch. He was wearing the tunic although they would commonly be lying in their nameday suits if it wasn't for their little invaders.

"It won't be like this; they have to understand where they belong," Jon told her and she dismissed him pretending to be the stringent threat he wasn't. Not once the children have bent his will. 

"Did you like it?" she blurted out. "What we did...and after it?"

His eyes went from the ceiling to her own, bright in the dim light of a single, hard-dying candle. 

"I enjoyed it, pretty much," he replied.

She could tell so, her nether parts still resented. 

"It is what they do. Val and Jarl," she reminded him. "So, keep yourself away from Dalra or I will take a walk with her the next time."

It wasn't a real threat, wasn't it? She found herself asking. There was little control of her part when it came to these feelings - she believed in him wholeheartedly but not in her own reactions. 

As best he could, Jon reached for her neck and gave her a gentle squeeze. 

"I love you," he proffered, "Only you. Always you."

"I know," she replied, in plain confidence. 


	13. The Magnar (The Smoke After The Fire)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another example of why I put a number on the POVs in this story: I sometimes write random scenes without following the outline. Like these.
> 
> There are really no spoilers for anything here, except maybe the children's reaction after their parents return.
> 
> Enjoy.

**Daenerys**

**Beyond The Wall**.

Dalya was hopping to the sound of a High Valyrian dirge Daenerys was singing to her. Unlike others, this was not dreary nor did it evoke a feeling of sorrow for those who were no longer there but a celebration of life and the fact they had lived in the first place. Her youngest daughter has had a very good predisposition for the High Valyrian. And it was no less since it was the language in which Dany commonly spoke to all her children, although with Dalya it's been a slower process due to their long separation. She'd spoken to Jorian and Missella in her mother tongue as they were living in Ser Willem's house in Braavos. And it hadn't changed much once they settled in the north, except for the fact that only a handful of people knew the language. Jon had become one of those people thanks to his interest in the books that Lyrissos had gifted them. 

Seven moons turned since their return home and things seemed to settle at a steady pace. Dalya had abandoned her strangeness with Daenerys and was now always attached to her mother's skirts while Dany carried out her daily chores. Of the three children, she had been the most difficult to convince to leave her parents' bed. 

Jorian, in his chaotic way, stopped feeling the constant threat of abandonment by entertaining his energies in physical activities. He was still overprotective of Daenerys and had sworn that he would become the best warrior of the Free Folk so he could "go with her to Essos to help her help people."

"Papa can stay with Missella and Dalya next time, and I'll go with you," he had argued, surprising Daenerys and Jon by assuming, almost without distress, that there was going to be a next time. His parents almost assertively supposed it had to do with meeting Drogon as well.

Missella remained careful, almost as if she wanted to protect herself from the pain of losing her parents again. She hadn't been the loving and caring child she had been when Dany left, and it broke her heart as much as feeling Drogon's call. 

No matter how her children chose to behave as a result of their abandonment, Daenerys did her best throughout that time to return to being the mother they knew and who she had not ceased to be, no matter how much distance had created a rift between them.

It hadn't been much different for Jon. However, he manifested his pain in silence, and it was not after her insistence that he opened up to express his concern about not understanding some things about their little ones.

Dany chose to believe that this was what parenting was all about –constant learning as the children grew up and moved further away from them to belong more to the world.

As she made her way through the camp of their retinue toward the fist of the first men, Dany nodded to the various women who greeted her. Some of them were familiar faces from Braavos' journey, and therefore part of the spearwives, while other women were simple farmers. She had great affection for all of them and them for her as well. Of all the places Dany had inhabited, she felt that she had made a true home among the free folk, even though at times she couldn't feel fully a part of them.

Homelife was noisy, dirty, and smelly, but cozy and communal too. While she and Jon had brought a sense of organization, their influence had been minimal in a culture that had already been more or less organized. Women enjoyed a high degree of freedom, could own property, ask for a divorce if not treated properly, and they shared responsibility for running farms and homesteads with their menfolk. 

But it was not like that everywhere. The free folk was a vast community and life beyond the wall was not limited to the surroundings of the Wall and Hardhome. 

Before even opening the flap of her tent, Daenerys guessed from the sounds coming from it what she would find.

" _Kelītīs, riñar_ ," she told Jorian and Sigurd when she found them engaged at a game of wrestling on the tent's furred-floor. Jorian lifted his eyes off the other kid and looked at her with those stormy gray eyes of him. " _Daor vīlībāzma_ ," _no fighting_ she reminded him.

Reluctantly, her son gave up the scuffle. 

Sigurd walked over to her with a smiling face, giving her a hug. She returned the gesture and then squeezed his chin when he pulled away to leave. 

Jorian started nagging about not being allowed to participate in the fighting rounds as were all of the other children. He was not even eight and was already trying to test himself with children almost twice his age. The lifestyle there was harsh and the passage from childhood to maturity, especially for children, always entailed the performance on the battlefield. 

She could still remember how she almost lost her voice that time she discovered a knife hidden between his bedding. 

"When your father finds the time befitting," she simply answered to his grievances. In truth, it was an unspoken agreement that Jon would not say the words until she deemed it timely. Meanwhile, training in the standard sense of the Seven Kingdoms was all that he was allowed. 

Jorian rolled his eyes at his mother and walked past to leave the tent, just as Dany caught him in a hug. Of course, she wouldn't stop her children from preparing to become proper warriors, yet in Dany's eyes, they were still her babies.

Daenerys fixed her eyes on Missella, who was on her paddle, with feathers and sticks around her.

"Missella sweetling, what are you doing?" Dany asked her.

Without taking her eyes off her work, the girl answered quietly, "Arrows."

Just as Jorian had focused his energies on combat and knives, for Missella the bow and arrow had become her priority –leaving all behind her bone dolls and clay figurines. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought that her older children hardly paying attention to their toys anymore.

"Missella is making butterflies, Mama," Dalya pointed out when she saw the fletchings. 

The girl scampered to where her older sister was and perched on her shoulder to get a better view. Missella apprehensively moved her feathers away from the young one's reach. Another thing that Dany had noticed was how much Missella had gained a sense of what she wanted to be only hers, which in turn, clashed with Dalya's growing curiosity as she still conceived of the world as something limitless.

"Dalya, would you help me?" Dany called the attention of the little girl so she would leave her sister alone, and with her head, she nodded towards the table where wool awaited her to be spun on a spindle. Dalya scampered back to her side.

Dany showed the process to the little girl, who found it amusing.

"It's a cloud, Mama!"

"No, it's wool from the sheep in our flock, the ones that make _baa_ ," Dany mimicked the sound of those animals, eliciting another fit of laughter from her daughter. "Look, I hold it and you turn it," she invited.

They were at it for a long time before Missella approached with inquiring eyes. Dany was about to ask her if she needed anything, believing that maybe the constant chatter was bothering her when she spoke by herself,

"Can I help too?"

Dany's heart clenched. She opened an arm to make room for Missella at her side, who hurried and give her a hug before getting into it all as well. 

**Jon**

"I'm not going to spend another year raising another of your dragonwolf cubs," Tormund complained when he found him brooding near a cliff above their camp. Jon did not immediately know what had elicited it until he realized that Dany's new pregnancy was no longer a secret between the two of them. 

Jon scoffed.

"Munda did all the hard work," he returned.

"Maybe, but those little shits ask question after question and words are not my strength, Little Crow," Tormund argued after laughing. "Also, your Dragon Queen is very strict about words –don't swear, don't tell them about the dragons, don't swear..."

Jon chuckled too. As much as Dany tried to guard the children's ears against adult swearing, they always seem to find some new term with which to keep their mother tormented. Just last night Jorian had asked what _cunt_ was.

"You know what they say, you had to find a way to keep yourself warm," Jon reminded his friend of his own advice from many years ago.

"Aye, but there are also woods witches and moon tea," Tormund replied. "I should have talked to you more often about it. What is that? You're always with that," he asked him with his attention turned on the object in his hands. 

Jon looked down at the tome he was holding. One of those Lyrissos had gifted them.

"A book about the Valyrians," Jon answered. 

"The dragon people, eh? Something useful there?"

 _Quite a bit_ , Jon thought with amusement, not wanting to delve further into it.

"Do we have news from the scouts?" Jon asked, turning the conversation to another matter.

"Aye, bring your brooding arse down to the camp. We have to discuss it."

Jon nodded and followed him down. Coming home had not been the idyllic rest he had hoped for. As soon as the news of the return of what among their people was called _the great plunder across the sea_ , objections from the other chieftains had arisen.

A meeting of chieftains would take place again after almost three years. The last time Jon had just recovered his family and because of them, had decided to take the reins of the affairs of the free folk at least as far as it concerned him and was necessary to protect his loved ones. Back in the time, his meddling had been frowned upon by those who rightly believed that he was not really part of them. His victory in the first confrontation with Sansa and Lord Glover had won him the support of much of the warriors but not entirely their acceptance.

Jon was realistic in this regard. Why would he have more authority than someone that was part of them and had always been on this side of the wall?

 _"You have done more for them than any of their leaders,"_ he recalled Daenerys' words when he brought it up with her. _"Sometimes to improve things you just have to act, not dwell on the chaff."_

He smiled to himself thinking of Dany burning the Khals of Vaes Dothrak to take their khalasars.

"Papa!" Jorian's voice came from one side and the boy slammed against him.

"Hey, watch your pace," Jon admonished him softly, pushing him away from a little. "What happened?"

He and his friend Sigurd had mischievous smiles on their faces and their hair raised in a bun as he himself wore it. Jorian's silver hair stood out next to his best friend's blonde hair. 

"Can we see the scouts and the man with the queer headgear? Can we?" Jorian asked without stopping to explain why the rush.

Being of a taciturn temperament himself, Jon sometimes found it difficult to keep up with his son's unbridled rhythm.

Jon chuckled and gestured for them to follow him into the tent where they would meet. Inside were the usual faces plus the scouts, who were assailed with questions from the children as soon as they saw them. 

Jon walked to Jarl, who was absorbed in an early design of the map of the lands Beyond the Wall that they had achieved thanks to the work of the scouts and Idrisi, a scholar from Essos that was temporarily living in Hardhome and who was also a traveler and experienced explorer. He was the man of the queer headgear the children so desperately wanted to see.

"It is called _chaperon_ ," he heard Idrisi answer to the children's question about his queer headgear.

"What are the news?" Jon asked anyone who wanted to answer.

Jarl looked up at his presence.

"Sigorn is not pleased," he warned.

"And how do you know?"

"Because he's behind you," he pointed out.

Jon frowned and turned, finding the Magnar of the Thenns glaring at him from his seat surrounded by his escorts. 

"Good to know," Jon said sternly. 

Jarl rested his clenched fists on the table as he was prepared to intercede in the exchange once more time since Jon still lacked mastery of the Old Tongue.

Jon took a seat and the audience began although he was not sure that it should be since they were still on their way to the main encampment and only Sigorn and not the rest was present. 

"Magnar Sigorn, I'm glad to see you in good health," he began, slowly as Jarl behind him interpreted the words for Sigorn. "However, I don't think this meeting should take place until the other clan chiefs of the free folk are assembled."

Sigorn answered with harsh words, or so Jon believed when he heard the bluntness with which he spoke.

"He wants to know why he was not called to participate in the great plunder across the sea. He is offended," Jarl let him know. His voice was monotonous in comparison.

Jon realized that the Magnar paid little mind to his first objection.

"We never agreed to carry out a joint assault. My word was the fair and equitable sharing of the spoils of war," Jon reminded him. He crouched down and rested his arms on his lap, staring back at the other chief. "Our deal was an alliance of mutual collaboration and peace. I was not aware that you wanted to join the looting parties. You never let me know."

"He demands another redistribution of the riches that came to Hardhome and a new assault," Jarl translated.

Jon almost laughed at the ridiculousness of his demand. Essos was not exactly an ideal place to carry out such a task whenever they wanted and it had not even been true looting according to the understanding of the free folk. Furthermore, Jon was not willing for Sigorn, no matter how much he respected him for his authority over the free folk, to believe that he was a vassal of his or that he was lower in the chain of command.

"As far as I know, I kept my word," Jon said.

"I can't say that," Jarl said before turning to the Magnar.

"Why?"

"Because you promised him a castle in the south and a wife. And you don't have any of those things here to give him, right?"

Jon raised a questioning eyebrow at Jarl.

"I never promised him those things. I listened to his request and we talked about keeping the wall's territory secured and moving forward. We never agreed again how we were going to carry out such a move."

Jarl almost rolled his eyes as he spoke to the Magnar.

Sigorn's chest heaved up and down in a clear sign of dissatisfaction.

Jon felt Jorian approaching his side, leaning on the armrest of the chair.

"Go back to your mother," he indicated to his son when he noticed that the tension could escalate, and with his eyes, he looked for Tormund to escort him there.

When he looked back at Sigorn he saw that his furious gaze had changed to something else, between envy and helplessness. When he spoke, he seemed to spit out the words with contempt.

He heard the heavy sigh that Jarl trailed behind him.

"The Magnar says that you speak from a privileged place. With a powerful wife, children, and riches. That the other chieftains will see with jealousy that a single man holds so much to himself."

Jon's jaw clenched despite the subtlety of his threat.

"Let the Magnar know he shall think better the next time he believes himself bold enough to talk about my family," his head turned slightly, "Unless he wants to resolve our disagreement in single combat."

Jon stood up and retired.

**Jarl**

"I don't think it was a threat, he was rather warning you," Daenerys replied when Snow finished recounting the encounter with the Magnar and the exchange that had ended in nothing.

Snow looked at his wife in disbelief.

"Isn't it the same?" he asked.

They were all gathered in their tent. Lying on the floor as they shared supper and the children scampered around doing what children do best: noise and chaos.

Jarl extended one of his arms to his side for Jorian, Sigurd, and Kalea to stop before they even tried to put branches in his hair again.

"Not at all. I don't think it was ill-intended in spite of the poor delivery of his words," he heard Daenerys replied as he turned slowly and glared at the three infants behind him.

The three of them ran off while giggling.

 _Little shits_ , he thought amusedly.

When he looked at Val next to him she was giving him a soft look, the kind of which she rarely allowed herself in front of strangers. He smiled fondly too, feeling all the love for her burn inside him.

"It seems to me that you are not considering the crux in this whole matter, my love," the Dragon Queen surprised with her statement. Everyone stared at her in awe, even her husband. She raised an eyebrow briefly. "Sigorn wants a castle in the south and a wife. The time has come to plunder the kingdom of sweet Queen Sansa Stark."

**Yara**

Daenerys was waiting in the makeshift port of the Milkwater with two escorts of the wildlings, clad in heavy white furs that brought together her silver hair made her shine against the mostly snowy landscape of the fist of the first men.

Despite the cold, that image did little to cool her.

"I hope the waters were kind, Captain Greyjoy," she greeted her.

Yara nodded saying that it was not the water that was the problem but the air and then she followed her as she led her into the encampment of the wildlings. Her men behind her walked, muttering curses from the cold.

"See that big tent over there?" Daenerys pointed out. "That's where we'll be in a moment. But now I want to introduce you to my children. So I'd appreciate it if your men would stay behind."

Yara did not think she had reason to distrust her so she ordered her men to stay and stand guard there. Or that they look for some wild arse to fuck to stop whining from the cold. She certainly intended to do that.

She was curious to know what kind of infants were waiting. Daenerys was clearly an exceptional beauty as were her kind and Jon Snow...a Stark. Even Yara admitted it was hard to relate him with the harshness of Northerners.

Daenerys led her to a fairly large tent located almost in the middle of the camp. On the way she received harsh glances to which she responded with a smirk.

They entered the tent and there were three children quietly waiting in the company of their sire.

"Snow," Yara acknowledged him, before stopping her gaze on the children.

One boy and two girls.

Unlike the other wild children she saw on the way there, these were put in more...diverse and elaborate garments. They looked more like children from a northern family than wildlings.

"Lady Yara," Jon Snow politely replied.

None of the children bowed like children of the Seven Kingdoms would, though. That pleased Yara.

The boy and one of the girls –the youngling who seemed to want to get out of her father's grasp– had her mother's hair while the older girl, even down to texture, inherited Snow's curly dark hair.

That perfect portrait of the Targaryen family was completed when Daenerys approached. She'd shed her heavy fur cloak and was left in a crimson winter gown. Her swollen belly left no room for any other guess. She was again with child.

"These are Jorian, Missella, and," Daenerys introduced them, pointing from the boy, to the older girl, before being cut off when finally, the little wildling achieved her way out and reached to grab her mother's skirt to demand being lift up, to which Daenerys complied. "This one is Dalya."


	14. Reunion with the children (The Smoke After The Fire)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case this chapter isn't finished this week.

**Jon (XLI)**

**Wolves Den.**

Green life sprouted from the heavy mounds of snow more frequently each time the cycles of storms and winds gave way to the tranquility of still too tender spring. The trees closest to the shore were bare while further west thick crowns of deep green that almost looked black marked the entrance to the forest - another stretch of the Haunted Forest that kept their cabin sheltered and secluded from the rest of the village.

Jon had chosen to build his cabin here seven years ago because the forest accompanied him in his desire for solitude. In the present, it protected his life, that was his family.

Next to him came a muffled groan. Dany's shoulders trembled as she put a hand to her mouth to contain herself. Tears welled her eyes at the sight of their children on the banks of the river. From a distance, Jon could see how -who was clearly Jorian- ran out of Munda's grip to step almost on the water.

Jon also felt tick tears pool his eyes but did his best to hold them back as he circled Dany's waist and placed a kiss on her temple.

"We are home," he told her.

Dany and Jorian met halfway and meld into an embrace. She instinctively raised his little body so that the water would not cool him, even though the child was already all soaked.

The sounds of her son's desperate crying in his mother's arms finally broke him and silent tears slid down his cheeks.

"MAMA!" he said over and over, followed by several words in High Valyrian. When his gray eyes -the same as his- landed on him claiming, "PAPA!" he leaned forward for Jon to hold him.

"PA PA PA!" the screams came. Jon looked up with Jorian still wrapped around his neck to see Dalya in Tormund's arms, bustling with one arm outstretched and a tiny hand opening and closing in his direction, as if trying to reach for him.

Missella was there too, in a more reserved stance with an expression deeply shocked as if she couldn't find the way to react to the sudden presence of them.

Father and mother approached their daughters. Tormund, Munda, Dalra, and Jorian's little friend were also there waiting.

Of course, Ghost was diligently standing nearby and holding back his excitement at the sight of him although it could be perceived in the joyous wagging of his tail and his single ear tilted.

As soon as he was there, Dalya whimpered a demand for her to be picked up in his arms. With his free arm, Jon pulled her close, burying his face into her neck and her silver hair, breathing in her soft babe scent that yet had not disappeared.

Dany next to him had knelt, careful not to overwhelmed Missella more than she already was. His eldest daughter has always been very prudent in her affections and guarded with physical contact - he himself had not been able to get close to her until she had chosen to get close to him first.

Jon also knelt to be close to his wife and daughter, while Jorian babbled incomprehensible words over his heavy sob.

"Missella," Dany said softly, one hand carefully extended in her direction. "Do you remember me, my love? I'm Mama."

Missella nodded. The line of fallen tears stained her pale cheeks - her face paled in the tumult of emotions that overwhelmed her. Her crying was a silent suffering as opposed to the manifestation of open emotion of her siblings. Her dark, wild curls had been braided into a single braid that fell her left side. Lilac eyes stared at her parents in dismay.

Dalya dug her - quite sharp and long - nails into the skin of Jon's neck, drawing his attention.

"Thank you," Jon said to Tormund, Munda, and Dalra. "Thank you for taking care of my family."

Dalra and Munda nodded, stepping back and taking with them the other boy who was only watching the scene with childish curiosity. Tormund stood a little longer to appreciate the image of them with a smile of sincere happiness. Jon supposed that seeing him in his greatest misery to this, had left a mark on him.

The lick of Ghost's tongue took him by surprise and Jon laughed, sinking his hand into his white fur.

"Thanks to you as well," he told him.

By the time he turned his attention back to Dany, Jorian had slipped back into her embrace. Missella had taken a few steps back as if she also wanted to give them space but when she looked back and took in the situation, she finally burst into tears and ran into Dany's arms with a stentorian cry.

That night as the din of festivities and celebration could be heard in the distance, they lay huddled with their children while holding hands together and looking into each other's eyes with a love that was greater than all the kingdoms the world has known. 


	15. Azi Dahaka (The Smoke After The Fire)

**Jon**

"We'll read a story, aren't you coming?" Jon asked Missella, who hadn't walked with them to the room he shared with Dany. The night before she had fallen asleep and had not been awake when they did the same.

Jon found her alone in the room she shared with her siblings, already tucked under the furs, staring upwards.

"No, I'm sleepy," she responded simply. 

Jon walked in and sat down on the edge of her bed. As Dalya grew to be the spitting image of Daenerys, Missella favored him more every day – except for the Targaryen lilac eyes, of course. 

"Are you feeling well? Does something hurt you?" Jon insisted, touching her face to rule out that she was suffering from some kind of fever or indisposition. 

"No, Papa," she gruffed. "I'm sleepy," she repeated.

Then she closed her eyes and lay on her side.

Jon bent over and kissed her head crowned with dark curls like his. Before pulling the door open, he looked back one last time but she was deep into slumber.

When he reached their room, Dalya was quietly waiting on the doorsill. Jon picked her up in his arms and walked inside.

"She was waiting for you," Daenerys' voice coming from the bed sounded outraged and Jon could only smile in response. 

"Aye, did you?" he spoke to Dalya, who nuzzled her head into his neck.

"And Missella?" Daenerys asked.

He sighed regretfully.

"She was asleep," he replied.

The same concern appeared on her face.

"I should get to see if she's fine," she started moving from the bed but Jon hurried off to reassure her.

"She is fine. I made sure of it."

Although she looked past him with a conflicted expression, she sat back down on the bed and Jorian crawled up to lie between her legs and her chest.

"I want to hear the tale!"

Not a full week had passed since their return, but Jorian's attachment was beginning to worry him. Actually, the behavior of all their children became a source of worry for them. As the days passed, Jon and Dany were still trying to figure out the correct way to deal with it.

"Well, let's see," Dany opened the book she already chose for that night. A path they were exploring was that of the stories –as that was how Jorian and Missella had started bonding with him when they first met.

He settled next to his wife, with Lya sitting in the space between the two of them to get a better view of the book in her mother's hands, though her little arm was extended and her small hand closed tightly onto the fabric of his tunic as if she were making sure that even if she didn't have her eyes on him, he wouldn't escape from her again. Jon never thought he would be so overwhelmed by such an innocent gesture.

"Can you read this?" Daenerys asked Jorian as she pointed to the High Valyrian words that were etched into the leather of the cover. There was another engraving just as important.

"A-zi...Da-ha-k..." the boy spelled slowly, furrowing his brow and murmuring the union between words to himself. He then looked up to his mother. "Azi Dahaka?" he sought confirmation. 

"Yes! Very well. That's the name of this tale," Dany congratulated him.

"What is this?" Jorian pointed at the figure that rested on its cover.

"This is it," Dany began, "A dragon."

His son's eyes widened before he’d frowned again in confusion.

"A dragon? But Tormund said they were like chickens!"

An involuntary burst of laughter escaped from the back of his throat as he threw his head back.

"Tormund is not very good with words or describing things," Daenerys also sounded amused. 

Jorian reached for Daenerys' arm to move the book and get a better look at the three-headed dragon embossed on the leather. It had nothing to do with the banner of House Targaryen, for this tome belonged to the lore of ancient Valyria but it could well have been a source of inspiration for it.

"So…this is a dragon? It looks very scary."

"They can be a very impressive view for the eyes," Daenerys agreed. "But you shouldn't be scared. Because you are a dragon as well."

Jorian sat back on his haunches with a jerk, both hands supporting his weight.

"What?" he asked in an exaggerated tone of voice.

"Yes. We all are dragons," Dany told him.

"I'm not a dragon, Mama. I cannot fly!" 

"Well, no. You can't. And please, never try," she admonished very seriously. "Would you please let me read you this story so I can better explain to you how is that your father, your sisters, me, and you, we are all dragons?"

"Aye," Jorian responded reluctantly.

Dany began to narrate the story while helping Jorian read the words in the book while showing Dalya the illustrations on its pages. Jon was sure that she wasn't even close to being faithful to what the story told but that was her way of telling tales, with mimics and exaggerated voices that attracted and kept the attention of their children. He really would've liked Missella to be there as well.

The tale was about a three-headed dragon, created by the gods to wield great power in the world of other magical beings. But soon he had been chained by his enemies in the far reaches of this world and was waiting to one day be released. From that, she was able to tell him about the Valyrians and, very last and lightly, about the Targaryens of Dragonstone.

When Dany had finished, Jorian was fascinated. She had omitted the details of the doom of Valyria and touched far above the origins of their family: explaining about the kings of Westeros from whom they descended.

As if someone (probably Tormund) had warned him about it, Jorian asked sheepishly, "Where is your dragon?"

Dany lowered the book. Lya was already numb on Jon's belly. He could see how a hint of sadness overshadowed her motherly contentment. "You know I have a dragon," she admitted. "His name is Drogon." 

"That's a silly name, Mama."

Both of his parents chuckled. 

"Well, don't tell him that when you meet him."

Jorian's jaw dropped and his sleep-heavy eyes widened a bit.

"I will meet him?"

Daenerys looked at him before looking back at their son.

"Someday, I hope," she said.

"Why not tomorrow? Can Sigurd come to meet him too?"

Daenerys combed a long silver curl behind his ear as she stroked his plump cheek.

"Drogon is far off from our home, my love. He is a dragon, and they like to roam free," she told him thought Jon knew how painfully that lie should be for her. The last time they saw Drogon, he was furious for being left alone again. 

"Then how I can meet him?" Jorian was curious to know. 

"Someday you will. I promise you." Dany bent down to kiss his head in the same fashion he did with Missella. It was a tender gesture of reassurance. She looked into his eyes intently. "We are of the blood of the dragon. And as Azi Dahaka, we are just waiting to be released." 

***

"Be careful," Daenerys whispered an admonition as he carried Jorian to his bed. Jon felt a new kind of tug on his back as he got up and wend his way to the children's room. Either he was suffering the consequences of aging or his son was swallowing too much in their absence.

Before returning, he looked at his three children one last time and thought that he would never change a thing in his life if that could alter as it was now.

He returned to his wife and found her lying on her back with her eyes to the ceiling, her brow furrowed and her hands folded over her belly.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

She turned her head to him.

"You did that?" One hand with one finger extended pointed out to the ceiling. "The patterns," she clarified. 

"I bought it from an artisan in Hardhome."

He had had plenty of free time to devote himself to making improvements to their cabin while she was saving the world across the Narrow Sea.

"I was counting them," she explained, propping herself up on her elbows, which caused his little self-control to give way as he slid his eyes over her nipples outlined beneath the fine fabric of her nightgown.

 _Not tonight_ , he admonished himself. They were already exhausted and wanted to enjoy some time for themselves as well.

"That will get you snoring into sleep."

"No, the children already did that," she replied with a lazy smile. 

He walked over to the books they had brought from Essos, mostly from the collection Lyrissos had given them. He took the one with the red cover and engraved gold letters.

"Does the story says that actually? About Azi Daka."

"Azi Dahaka," she corrected him. "Not exactly. Azi Dahaka was a mean beast created by the forces of evil. He lies beneath the ground, chained and enraged at the waiting for the day he'd be released from his imprisonment to bring chaos, fire, and blood to all humanity." She wore a sly smile on her face. "I had to change some bits."

He chuckled and walked over to the bed.

"Let's read ourselves something more useful," he said, showing her the book in his hand.

"I'll read for you, you mean."

She took the book he was offering her and examined it. While the children were to start to get in touch with their origins through stories that she would carefully introduce them to, they themselves were curious to know more about the Valyrians of yore.

"This one seems interesting," Jon opined. He had already laid down next to her on the bed.

"You can't know that," Dany scoffed as she leaned on her side and opened the book.

" _Ameron_."

"What?"

"That day in Volantis, Lyrissos mentioned that name and, contrary to the common belief, I can read some Valyrian."

She chuckled, kissed his cheek, and snuggled closer to him to start the reading. 

"Okay, let's us start. Ameron, the black prince."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Azi Dahaka is actually a mythological figure of Persian folklore


	16. Sneak Peak: "These Are My Children" (The Storm After The Fire)

Winterfell's courtyard filled up as it hadn't been in a long time, not since they had rallied against a single enemy who knew no sides. Tyrion thinks that this time it is not much different. He steps into the courtyard with a stern look on his face, he still doesn't trust completely Jon's people at all, and he only hopes to see Podrick safe and sound among them. Besides, he was extremely curious about Jon's family.

He meets the same faces that were in Castle Black that day, the Giantsbane and the grumpy dark-haired man. The surprise addition was a honey-haired woman, very beautiful, but with a sharp, lethal gaze.

_The Queen consort perhaps?_

Finally, what he expects to see the most comes to sight. _The Children_. If doubts remain about the bastard's origins, the looks of two of his children have killed each of them.

Jon's eldest daughter could well be the resurrected image of Lyanna Stark, or so Tyrion guesses since he had never met the bastard's mother. Sharing her saddle, a boy of no more than five years with silver hair. Behind her come two children who must not be older than ten, a girl with long silver hair and a boy who also had taken Jon's looks.

His heart skips a beat when the ghostly image of Daenerys greets him on the face of the little lady. As if she knows what he's thinking, the girl smirks at him.

 _But there is one missing_ , Tyrion notices. Podrick wrote in his letter about five children.

At that moment, two last riders enter Winterfell's yard –Jon and another rider at his side, whose head is covered by a helmet.

By the time Sansa and her family have lined up in front of their household as if it were the warmest of welcomes, Jon's family also ranks in front of them with less pretended amiability.

The curly dark-haired girl, Daenerys reborn, the skinny boy with hair pulled up in a bun, and the youngling that barely keeps posture while picking his nose, they are all don on elaborate garments. They don't look like wildlings at all –but Jon's kingdom have long stopped being a wildling settlement, so it shouldn't surprise them.

Tyrion cannot help but wonder which name they go by; Targaryen, Stark, or Snow.

He frowns when the rider that came with Jon dismounted, crossed in front of the children, and stood next to the older girl. When he takes off his helmet he understands why.

 _Seven hells_.

The missed one, another son. And Tyrion knows it immediately because, in spite of surpassing him in height, his silver hair and graceful walk could have been the painted image of Rhaegar Targaryen.

 _Seven hells_.

They were identical, the boy and the eldest girl, twins like Jaime and Cersei. They must be around their ten and four, he supposes although the boy look beyond his years at first sight. 

_Seven hells_.

Five children. Five children who mean more to the Realm than they could imagine. Children who are the reborn offspring of an almost extinct race and of two dynasty of kings that have a legitimate claim over the lands their forefathers claimed before them, which they would only have to call upon to have Westeros back subsumed in a civil war. 

That, if Daenerys lets them live, which he now assumes she would do, after all is what she had always wanted, at least in the past. A family and a legacy. So the dilemma is another before that possibility, he quickly concluded. He doesn't just have to unite Westeros against an imminent attack from foreign forces. He also has to prevent these children from turning out to be just the beginning of bigger political trouble.

The sharp look Jon gives him when he catches him watching his children tells Tyrion that it won't be a simple task.

"Where is Podrick?" Tyrion asks, not dwelling on absurd formalities.

Jon smirks wickedly. Then he looks up at Sansa, her crippled husband, and their slow-witted son.

"Sister," he greets in a dry tone. "Thank you for the invitation. It will be an honor for the kingdom Beyond the Wall and its people to contribute their forces in this conflict. It is good to be able to put our differences aside."

All this he says with the calm of someone who has easily taken half her kingdom from her like a child from whom a sweet is taken.

Sansa's face reflects all her content anger and defeat.

Jon totally ignores the crippled husband and fixes his eyes directly on the boy whose gaze is lost on the snowy ground. Jon kneels to address him.

"Nice to meet you, Prince Eddard."

The boy lifts his eyes for a moment and seems to recognize him. He does not stop moving in that way that everyone who is like him does but he seems even happy that someone comes up and does not treat him like the simpleton he is.

"These are your cousins," Jon tells him, turning a bit to look proudly at his abundant offspring. "Jorian, Ella, Dalya, Ameron and Zae. These are my children."

All her children except the oldest step forward and bow slightly. Even the smallest one that is holds his sister's hand while he sucks his thumb. It is much younger than Tyrion has believed. The girl who looks like Daenerys even breaks all protocol when she steps forward to embrace Eddard.

"No," Sansa lets out a little cry, anticipating one of her son's outbursts but instead, the boy remains in the most utter calm in her cousin's embrace. 

Tyrion breaks away from the moment by insisting, irked in Jon's direction with a low groan, "Where's Podrick, you bastard?"

"The wolves have claimed him," responds, surprisingly, Jon's son, the oldest of them, the one who had refused to step forward with the rest of his siblings. "And soon, the Dragon will claim you as well, imp."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost added Sansa's POV but held back. LOL.


	17. 1/3 of chapter 25 (The Smoke After The Fire)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again and very happy new year! Only a few days ago I returned home after spending time off with friends and family away from the place we were locked up for a year. During that time, I rarely looked around the site. It is just me or there are a lot of Jonsas stories in the Jonerys tag now? Did I miss something? hahaha. It is weird. There is this saying in Spanish that goes something like: there is everything in the Lord's vineyard. I don't know what proverb it's the equivalent in English but man if I find that pairing so weird. And look at me here like a fool not adding the tag so as not to stir up strife. 
> 
> Well, all this talk is to avoid the pink elephant in the room. 
> 
> I am wholeheartedly sorry for making you wait so long. Guess it is just the way I am as a pseudo writer, sometimes I can put effort into an idea and then lose interest that same way - which is not the case with this story. With this one, I try to put my full attention to it, even to small details in the setting and etcetera. 
> 
> It is with those others that I left unfinished. Remember that scene from the Simpson where Homer finds his unfinished robot and the poor thing asks for legs? That happens to me with those stories, including The Threshold, which I'm totally rewriting while rescuing some of the criticisms that have been made on it that I found sensible.
> 
> Between yesterday and today, I have written 6000 words for this story, which is quite an achievement since I have spent the last few weeks with my mind totally elsewhere. Since I'm anxious and I also know that you like to get previews, here's what the 1/3 of this chapter would be like. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> ( * discreetly adds the tag but on a different date so as not to cause any inconvenience *)

**25.**

**Why we can't be or see who cuts us asunder.**

**Lyrissos (II)**

**Volantis.**

Lyrissos arranged the stones in the decorative container it's been placed on the table, sorting them out by color and size. He was so focused on it that he actually was caught off guard when he heard an awkward hawk from across the room.

On a four-poster bed, a true beauty spread out. She had brown skin, shiny black hair styled in waves, and a sapphire gaze that could leave anyone else mesmerized. The price for her had been high —the highest, to tell the truth.

Lyrissos smiled apologetically and leaned back against the back of the coucher.

“It is not my intention to get you bored, my Lady. You can come by and contemplate the beauty of these stones with me,” he invited her. “At first glance, they don't seem interesting, but their artificial colors tell a story and I can be the voice of them. If you allow me."

The woman exhaled, annoyed. She threw her long legs over the other side of the bed and walked over to him, sitting across from him, but on the floor. Arms resting on the table, she feigned attention. 

"Very good," Lyrissos said with a smile. He hadn't intended to stop that long —the stones had really caught his eye. “This blue is only available in Tyrosh. They extract it from a plant that bears the name of _indigofera_. It is an extremely difficult pigment to come by, there have been stories of lords who have paid a fortune to just have a little of it to please their demanding wives,” he said as he peeled the surface of the stone to extract the color. Lyrissos sighed. "The things we do for love," he commented when a mound of dust was left on the table. He gazed at his company in front of him. Her long arms were uniformly decorated by gold bangles — except for her left wrist, where a simple chain decorated with precious stones encircled it.

Lyrissos thought that it was entirely feasible that her services would be worth her cost, but he was not naive to think that what came from using her services would ever touch the palm of her hands.

He reached out his arm and took the woman's left hand, taking a closer look at the chain. He scooped up some of the powder on the table and rubbed it over her smooth skin, painting it a vibrant blue.

***

Lyrissos closed the door behind him as he left the splendid room, rumors of feigned pleasures filling his ears. Two escorts awaited him in the hallway to whom he nodded as he crossed the path to the exit. With this woman, there had already been seven prostitutes that he had interviewed in search of the one who had the answer he was looking for, or rather, the person or persons. He didn't know of mercenaries who paid that much for the company, but Indigo and the other seven, there was someone who enjoyed paying for the best of it. One of those seven women had been the one who spotted Jon Snow that day, he had concluded when he looked out from the balcony of the temple. And one of them had informed someone from the Second Sons.

Now, Lyrissos knew nothing about this man, Daario Naharis. He seemed like the kind of man to get by on the road, an improviser. That had been a stroke of luck, a factor that played to his advantage when he least expected it. For a moment, he considered taking care of the seven girls to end the problem that plagued the mother of dragons but more efficient would be to also deal with the informants of Naharis who should not be far from there, given their apparent taste for expensive, exotic things.

 _Poor girl_ , he thought, _she has no idea that she carries enough wealth with her to get out of here once and for all_. 

He descended the steps to the street and put his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky where until not long a dragon was flying overhead.

**Val (V)**

**Wolves Den**.

Although Kalea was older than the dragonwolves children, in size and looks they were almost the same. All but the obvious coloring of her skin and eyes. Yet, they were not who reluctantly kept themselves away but the other way around, Kalea refused to take a single step toward the other children.

"Come on," Val encouraged her daughter. She had her dark hair lifted in a high braid like Val's own. "Come on, walk closer."

Kalea whined at the shoving of her mother but finally relented, standing in front of the dragonwolves' children who stared at her curiously. 

"Jorian, Missella, you could make good use of your manners now," Daenerys prompted them with a commanding tone. The Dragon Queen's presence was not unfamiliar to her daughter. 

"Where were you? I didn't see you before," asked the boy, Jorian. "Are you from some other clan?"

Kalea stared sharply, perhaps taking in the words that still sounded strange for her. 

"She comes from Braavos. Do you remember Braavos?" Daenerys answered before Val had to rummage in her mind for some far-fetched explanation. 

"Yes! It is where we used to live!" Jorian excitedly said. His eyes settled on Kalea when he asked her, "Have you seen the Titan of Braavos?"

Kalea kept undaunted. Val could remember the gigantic statue herself —her people had been rapt at the first sight of it from afar. Yet Kalea was just a child and her mind fragile. 

"She is very new to all of this, my love. Do you remember when we first came here with Papa? How you were cold all the time?" Daenerys interjected.

"And my nose got red! And my eyes were crusty as well!" 

And so the most garrulous child of Daenerys and Jon began his incessant chatter until little by little the three children shuffled to lie on the skin-carpeted floor to hold an insubstantial conversation.

It was enough to catch and hold Kalea's attention at times when the girl was not turning her gaze to make sure of Val's presence. Every time she did so however, Val felt a strong pressure in her chest like the one mothers must feel when they see their little children seek for their protection. Val wasn't sure if that was the case with her because she hadn't given birth to Kalea herself but she had decided to love her as her daughter and as such, accept all that entailed. 

Which was not the case with Jarl. He could not feel it because men needed to see in their children an extension of their blood. She knew it and had accepted to risk when she brought Kalea with her.

She'd hoped that because of his love for her he would eventually understand.

Val took a deep breath as she watched her daughter relax in the company of the other children. 

***

Val had seen Jarl return from his explorations and give her an annoyed look before ignoring her and going a different path. The gesture made her hands clench into fists. 

Her attention diverted then to where men were shouting audibly in another language.

 _The foreign soldiers_.

Val passed in front of them purposely and exchanged a long, fearless, challenging gaze. When she walked on, a sly grin drawn on her icy face, knowing exactly what she was inciting.

***

She looked over her shoulder and couldn't help but feeling smug. The man following her was not one of their own, of course. No one within the walls of Wolves Den would've made such a stupid decision.

Val took the path that led to the slope, taking long strides through the mounds of snow. This was her element, not the flat stone roads in the city of Braavos. Given the moment, she stopped and turned, when her shadow left discretion.

A man with a sharp, menacing look was behind her.

They didn't speak as he lunged on top of her, using all his strength to drive her against his body and the tree behind her. In fact, she felt the blow of her head against the wood startled her. 

The discomfort produced by his unwanted touch began to grow as Val searched in the darkness for some movement. The knife inside her boot burned as if it was calling for her. When the foreign man tried to put his hand inside her breeches, then she felt something attack him from behind, a knife that had pierced his neck from the back, causing him to retch with blood.

The man released her and reached uselessly to her throat, dropping to his knees in front of her as he drowned in his own blood.

Her gaze lifted to find Jarl's blazing, angry eyes in the darkness of the forest.

**Jarl (V)**

**Somewhere along the Northern Mountains**.

None of his people knew of this path he had found exploring the western part of the Northern Kingdom, through the passages of the mountains that were not inhabited by the mountain lords Snow had warned them about. He himself had found a couple of them on his way, but in those days the threat did not come from his people but the ironborn who were raiding and pillaging the cities of the coast, with the intention of continuing up to the mountains. Jarl couldn't help but wonder if among the latter two, which would be the most worthy contender for his people.

It embittered him to remember what had become of his people, lagging behind in a life of apparent calm.

Jarl watched from a safe distance the aftermath of an attack by the Ironborn on the coastal town. It was time for the Free Folk to go back to their old ways too.

***

**Wolves Den**.

He ran a hand over his face as he walked home, imagining the ways he would deal with Val —separation was not a strange thing to them, after all —when he glimpsed his wife's honey hair in the distance heading into the woods up the hillside. Behind her, a man.

His blood boiled with that familiar feeling. Jarl strode into the forest until he found them —the man pinning his woman against a tree as he moaned in his rush to take her. 

It didn't take him too long to react. Jarl took the knife at his waist and struck it with a single blow, piercing his neck. 

_Did she know?_ Jarl wondered as he watched the man bleed out, the gush of blood a dark river in the snow. He hadn't bothered to figure out who he was. From his garment he could tell that it was not someone among them, nor would anyone who knew them made such an unwise decision.

His eyes settled on his wife, her face still in a serious expression. Their late companion's blood running down her neck and staining her white furs. 

A moment later, Jarl was one her, taking Val against that same tree, the inert body of the stranger forming a pool at their feet.

**Daario (X)**

Almost daily he hovered on the deck of the ship to watch her cross a road from her home to the town and from there to the fields. _What could be called a field in this infertile land that she had chosen to inhabit_. Every day, the mere sight of Daenerys made Daario's groins burn and call for her. And every day at some point he would also see Jon Snow or the bastards he had sired her, and he would remember that she was not his.

 _Not for long_.

***

Daario bit back a snort when he saw Daenerys's boy hitting an opponent-shaped snow mound with a wooden sword, taking out some kind of anger at that. 

Of all of them, the child was the one who elicited the least rejection in Daario and of course if he was the one who most reminisced his queen mother with that easy-to-turn temperament and the loose strands of silver hair that fell in waves on his shoulders.

 _If he were a girl, he would be just like Daenerys_.

After striking a low and forceful blow, Daario emerged from his hiding place and walked towards him sputtering: "If you strike upward the next time, you'll get a better angle."

The boy jumped with the wooden weapon raised defensively. A quick reaction.

Daario ignored his defensive stance to continue explaining what he intended to make him understand, all the while receiving a steel gaze, inescapable and unyielding.

 _His father's eyes_ , he realized. _What a shame_ , he lamented. If for a moment he considered keeping this one, he dismissed the idea immediately when he realized he was still carrying the bastard's trail in his looks. 

"You are from the army of the sellswords," the boy blurted out. Daario couldn't recall his name.

"I am a friend of your mother," he said.

The mention of Daenerys made her son relax and look at him intently, though still suspicious. Then the lad frowned, still wary.

"Mama and Papa say I shouldn't talk to you," he remembered. 

He sounded hesitant, like it was something he should remind himself of. Daario wondered if all children were always this stupid, he wouldn't know since he never spoke to them.

Daario looked to his sides and over his shoulder, sitting on his haunches to be level with the boy.

"But it is Mama here?" He smirked.

Breathing deeply, the boy shook his head. His eyes widened with a shadow of concern. Daario saw fear in his eyes and so he stepped back and gave him his space. He would not be the one to deal with them.

Then Daario remembered the question he had asked him on the docks that day.

"Have you heard of the bear knight?" Daario asked, hoping to attain his trust. 

It was all he needed to say to make his shoulders sag and put a curious scowl on his face again.

"You knew him!"

Daario chuckled.

"We were old acquaintances. Yes."

"Ac...aqua?"

"I knew him, as I knew your mother," he grinned. "And as I knew Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal."

"Drogon? Mama's dragon?" Daenerys's son stared down at the ground thoughtfully. "Rhag ... al? Viserion?"

Daario stopped short, realizing that the boy did not know about the other two dragons that were dead. 

He looked at him contemplatively, waiting for an answer.

"Do you want me to help you there?" 

Daario changed the subject, circling the snowman.

"Papa says I must do it myself."

"But Papa is not here, right?"

 _Jorian_. That was the name, Daario remembered. An honor to the bear knight. That old man who had died in the service of his queen, loving her deeply and correctly until the end.

Old Jorah stared in the distance what he could never have. Daario was not willing to go through the same thing.

"Right," Jorian said simply, picking up his toy sword again.

***

Daario was called that same night to appear in the great hall and he guessed that Jorian had been unable to fulfill his promise to keep his mouth shut about their meeting that morning. The boy was a born charlatan, he could not stop once he believed he had people's attention and that Daario used to his advantage, seeking to learn more about the nature of Daenerys' relationship with Jon Snow. Besides, he was in the need of a couple of lessons to improve that boring Westerosi style that his father imposed on him and Daario was more than comfortable supplying.

Daario simply stood where indicated, carefree posture and hands clasped in front. Jon Snow led the group of people who were gathered with serious and expectant expressions, perhaps ready to act on the man's orders.

 _Jarl_ , he thought for a moment. A risky gamble on the part of Daario but out of all of them, the one who openly watched Jon Snow with dark and jealous eyes was the man who was not happy with the presence of the bastard among his people.

"Captain Naharis," began this one, sitting in the middle of the large table. Daenerys wasn't with him this time. "Captain Naharis, do you know why we have summoned you?"

 _Formality be damned_ , Daario cursed.

"I guess not to invite me a decent drink," he scoffed, earning a few groans of annoyance on his back.

"A soldier of yours was killed," Jon Snow kept on, "Killed by our people."

Daario raised an eyebrow and looked between them. This eventuality, though unforeseen, did not take him by surprise in the least. His men had been circulating in town and looking for company to heat their cocks. What difference did it make if a couple of them ended up dead for fucking the wrong cunt.

"Very well," Daario replied indifferently. "If that is all—,"

"That's not all," Jon Snow interrupted. He hesitated before continuing as he looked among his people. "We don't want to quarrel or arouse resentment from your people. We have the culprits."

"Culprits?"

Daario heard footsteps behind him. A pair of familiar faces entered the great hall, both with hands tied and escorted by the women who were also warriors of the wildlings.

Silence. The two wildlings were stained with blood. Jarl and his warrior wife.

"In Wolves Den we are governed by order. A universal law. _No murder_ ," Jon Snow raised his voice behind him as Daario watched Jarl closely. "Val and Jarl knew this when they decided to go back to their old ways."

Daario turned around.

"Why did my man end up in the middle of these two, then? For seeking to get into someone else's wife's skirts?" he replied.

Jon Snow's eyes dropped to the couple.

"Because they sought it out," he stated, "Not for the first time."

Murmurs went off in the room and both men turned to see Daenerys arrive and stand in the front row, contrasting between the people. She had a serious expression on her face but if one paid enough attention would notice her mind reeling. 

Daario took a breath and nodded.

"What does your law say?" he asked Jon Snow though the question might well be directed at the men and women around them —the people who truly belonged to this place.

"A life for a life," someone answered from behind.

"A foreign life shouldn't count as murder," replied another. And so on until someone banged against the table to stop the noise that was being created.

Daenerys' husband rose from his seat on the other side of the long table, his eyes dark and serious on Daario.

"What is your response to this attack on your people?"

Daario shrugged.

"He chose his fate," he simply replied, receiving some whistles and groans. "My men know that must rule their basic instincts. They have known that since," Daario tentatively looked up at Daenerys, "Since our queen has wanted it that way."

He watched her take a breath.

"Of course, people that do not respond to any person and is used to living under no law is going to be more likely to live outside of it. Let's leave it at that this time unless it becomes a much greater problem. In which case," he hesitated and glanced to Daenerys, "We will follow our queen's order."

Daario could feel the sharp look the bastard was giving him. Around them, he could hear dissonant voices.

***

Wildlings and their own would congregate and mingle under a pergola to share that strong and disgusting drink. It was there that Daario found Jarl.

"I assume from the fact that I still don't have a small man beheading me that you've at least been considering my proposal," he said as he took a seat on the stone bench in front of him. "Much more after everything that has happened between your beautiful wife and my soldier."

The wildling man drank from his curved horn before lowering it and muttered a stern warning under his breath. "Never talk about my wife."

Daario chuckled.

After a while, Jarl nodded.

"Our people have only progressed ever since they arrived," he said clearly in reference to Jon and Daenerys. "But it is also true that they begin to forget their roots. Where we come from and what we are."

"Sometimes, to move on, you have to loosen certain ties."

Daario himself had done it the day he decided to devote his life and his heart to Daenerys, even if she was still unable to see that.

This time it was his companion who let out a skeptical chuckle.

"How?" he asked, "How do you get Daenerys not to kill you for even thinking of hurting her family?"

"Why should she? She won't know. The only thing Daenerys will know is that the people she considered hers have deserted her and I am the only one there for her."

A stern look. "That puts my people in danger."

"I'm taking her," Daario blurted out. "When it happens, _if it happens_ , I am taking her away and by the time she finds out, you will save your people from her wrath."

"She has a dragon. And the red witch."

"Nothing that can't be removed or controlled." Daario felt cornered. Of course, his plan was not well defined yet but he would know what to do when the time came. He had always done it that way. "Once we return to Essos, it will be impossible for her to return. I will take care of it. You have my word. But I need to loosen the ties that bind her to this continent."

"Have you ever heard that you have to let go of what you love to know if it is really yours?"

His sudden thoughtfulness took Daario by surprise but he didn't back down.

"I don't wait for things to come to me. I go for them and take them."

The wildling man swallowed hard, squinting at him. He finally nodded and let out a held breath.

"I know of a tribe that doubles our numbers and they have been eager to take over Wolves Den and Hardhome ever since we settled," he admitted. "We can pass it off as an attack from the outside. It has happened before. The strong eat the weak. And my people at this moment are made up of the fainthearted who have lagged behind."

"Alright. When?" Daario said trying to contain his excitement.

Jarl rose from his seat, ready to leave.

"In a fortnight," he said before leaving.

**Tyrion (XVIII)**

**Water Gardens.**

Stepping into the tub of scalded water, Tyrion felt like he was being bathed in fire. Purified by it. He shook the thoughts out of his head, remembering those were words long ago uttered by the red priestesses in the alleys of the Great Bridge of Volantis that harangued Daenerys as their red lord's chosen one. 

Those were days long ago and if the gods, those tremendous bastards, were good, then Tyrion would never set foot in the East again.

Tyrion heard a giggle coming from the end of the tub, where a smiling Shae was looking at him with amused, mischievous eyes. He dipped his hands in the water and pricked his eyes, blinking to find only the emptiness of her absence.

_It's not real._

_She's dead_.

He changed into garments that had barely been suitable for his size and quickly he was escorted by the Dornish royal guard to where his presence was required. He knew he had to see Penny but was also aware that anything he requested would be denied. So he just obeyed.

They took him to open chambers that overlooked the beach. The air was scented with lemons and something sweeter.

"Your friend is a sad soul," he heard Princess Arianne say, who strode into the room from a side entrance. She wore a loosened, silky dress that accentuated every curve of her body. A true dornish beauty that dried his throat and made him crave some wine to quell the sudden thirst. "My maids have helped her where they could but she is wilder than expected."

"She's been through a lot of bad times," Tyrion replied. He raised his arms and pointed at the flagon of wine. "I would bother my Princess if...?"

The princess lifted her chin and then glared at him.

She nodded to signal the servants to pour wine at the table where he then motioned for him to sit down. That way they were almost on the balcony, a salty breeze kissing his cheek.

"We have informed King Bran of your presence, my Lord," she began as dishes of assorted colors were placed in front of them. Tyrion shifted in his seat feeling his belly growl. He hoped Penny was enjoying the same kindness. "My brother is rather anxious to send you back to King's Landing."

"I'd rather go home sooner rather than later," he replied, bringing the wine glass to his mouth and taking a long sip. He almost choked on the sour taste.

"Dornish wines are generally sour, though they occasionally can be richer of taste," commented the Princess taking her own glass and making it sway in her grip, "Strongwines from Dorne are as dark as blood, with a sweet taste," she said and sipped with the ease of one used to it. Princess Arianne frowned. "Did you say home, my lord? I thought the home of a Lannister was Casterly Rock."

He helped himself to the feast. Tiny fish rolled in salt and cooked crisp. Varieties of fruits that he couldn't even remember their names. Pastries, cream swans, spun-sugar unicorns, spiced honey biscuits, and apple crisps served as dessert. Seeing so much food suddenly turned his stomach, hunger turning to apprehension.

His hands clenched and Tyrion looked up.

"Well, apparently, I stopped being considered a Lannister the day I jabbed two arrows into my father while he was shitting himself."

They said the Dornishmen have a reputation for hot-bloodedness, so it did not surprise him when the Princess hide a smile beneath her glass.

Tyrion pretended not to see bits of the past repeat itself when he repressed the images of Daenerys in all her splendor sitting across from him. 

"We have a lot to talk about, Tyrion Lannister," she said.

"Of what for example?" he replied as he tentatively chewed on her food. "I am not authorized by my King to share state affairs with—,"

"I don't care what your king has to say. Nobody cares," she stated smugly. "Take a look around you. You're not in your element. Whatever I ask, you'll answer. That or," she smiled and glanced toward the door behind him. One of those smiles he remembered from his sister Cersei. "Your friend is not important to King Bran, or to anyone honestly."

Tyrion wiped his mouth with a napkin.

"Prince Oberyn said—,"

"My Uncle Oberyn is dead," she was blunt, "Partly to save that head of yours. And many people after him, you've survived them all. I want to know _how_."

"Saying it's my wits isn't it enough?"

"You've come too far to blame your wits."

"So it's luck. Or the gods' design. In what do the good people of Dorne believe?"

"I don't believe in gods, maybe they exist or maybe they don't. I believe they do not care for we are insignificant beings. Maybe they have actually put us in this world to take from it what we want."

Tyrion raised his glass and brought it to his mouth.

"And what does the princess of Dorne want?"

"Let's talk about Jon Snow."

Tyrion choked on the wine.

**Daenerys (XLIII)**

Again she had awakened before him.

As she listened to the soft snoring of her husband next to her, Dany counted the patterns carved into the wood on the ceiling. They had another big argument about Jorian last night, and this time Jon didn't give up. So it was Dany who went to sleep with the boy in the children's bedroom, returning to her bed once Jorian was sound asleep.

After a while, she felt Jon's hand move over hers, which rested on her belly. Dany raised her other hand to wrap it over. The distance between them was palpable but she did not stop needing and loving him.

"They're not happy," she said, thinking about the night before. It had been so long since Val and Jarl had gotten into trouble that she hadn't expected them to fall out of favor with her husband again.

"They won't always be happy," Jon shrugged it off.

Dany lay down on her side and brought his hand under her head.

"We should grant them some concessions," she suggested. "We can't always control their wild streak."

Not even with the Dothraki had she successfully done that. A culture that had lived under no laws for so long was not prone to abide so easily. Circumstances had made him flexible with Jon and Daenerys due to all the history they shared but that was still not enough. Dany was beginning to fear that they were taking a wrong step, abusing the goodwill of the Free Folk.

Jon was looking at her with a frown.

"What do you suggest?"

She sighed.

"I don't know. I was hoping you would fill in the voids."

At that little tease, he laughed. Her heart fluttered at the sound of it and she was soon crossing one leg around his waist and straddling him. She bent her head to kiss him and pretend for a moment that there was no problem between them or that in a few seconds the door would open with Dalya scampering to their bed.

However, it was Jon who pulled away.

He held her face inches from him with a strong grip.

"Never contradict me in front of our son," he stated sternly. 

Dany needed a moment to take in his words, blinking stiffly as she looked into his steel eyes.

"I-I was not," she mumbled. 

"When he sees us challenging each other, Jorian thinks he can choose a side. And there are no sides here, Daenerys. Either we are together or not."

Daenerys felt her blood run hot in her veins. 

She bent even lower to answer just as adamant, "I'm not one of your fucking trainees, you won't discipline me on how to be a parent to my children."

Jon's grip tightened and then immediately loosened. It was as if cold water fell on them for they suddenly parted and she fell back onto her side of the bed. Even if she wanted to agree with him, she felt betrayed and insulted by his berate.

Dany clicked her tongue and looked away.

It was one thing to feel deficient as a ruler, always someone having to allay her temper but that he wanted to do it when it came to her children, just made her blood boil. For four years she had done it on her own. By what right could he tell her that she was doing it wrong now?

"Are you listening to yourself?" Jon commented under his breath as if he was reading her thoughts. He probably had, knowing her so well.

The door opened and Dalya's little silver-haired head peered into the room before entering fully and running to the bed, leaping to place herself in the space between her parents.

***

"Missella, sweetling," Dany called her daughter. Normally in the mornings, Jon and the children would leave on their own as she stayed back with Dalya until she also started her daily chores. "Would you like to join me today?"

Missella was halfway out, her bow in hand. At her mother's call, the girl had turned slowly walked inside again.

"I have to train, Mama," she excused herself in almost a whisper.

"It'd be just today. Like we used to." _Before I left_ , Dany almost added but she stopped herself before she could utter the words. Admit what had left them there.

Of course, Missella hesitated and that made Daenerys breathe deeply, hurt, remembering when she was everything in her daughter's eyes. It might have also been an inevitable consequence of her growing up but she couldn't help but fight it tooth and nail.

"Fine," Missella said softly, putting the bow aside.

***

Dany had not returned to this place since those days when she had been too dejected to even form a coherent memory of it. Only the snowy mountains and the gray, infinite sky above their settlement. She had had to leave the seclusion at Wolves Den to climb up there, to her shelter. 

Missella had stayed in her company a short time before Dany mercy gave in to her long gazes toward the door and sent her to her training with Dalra, where her daughter always craved to be. 

If anything, it was Daenerys fault, she knew, just as she knew Jon's anger was in the right place. The sense of failure was a crushing weight.

The sound that came behind her must have made her jump but it didn't, she knew who would follow her there. It had been Kinvara first but she would not come a second time.

"I just came to lend you some company," he said, "I know that underneath all that tough image you intend to show, there is the same young woman who just wants and needs to be loved."

Daenerys laughed bitterly.

"You speak as if you know me, Daario."

"I know you," he insisted.

Daenerys turned to glare at him.

"No, you don't. You never have," she rose and turned to fully face him. "I know what you are trying to do."

He seemed to hesitate but then he became even more insistent.

"Saving you is what I'm trying to do," he told her.

"Save me?" Dany scoffed in disbelief. "Of what?"

Daario advanced towards her and Dany was about to back away until she remembered that behind her was only a steep slope.

"From him. From them. From all that you are not. The longer you are here, the more they will take from you."

"What are they supposedly taking from me?"

"It is not obvious?" He gave a bitter laugh and looked to the side. "Your strength. Your power. All that you are. The real Daenerys Targaryen would never have stayed behind another person, much less a man," as he said it he emphasized each word with a wave of his hand. "The real Daenerys imposes and commands."

 _In that you are not wrong_ , she thought. She would give him that.

"Don't you miss it? Everything you had before? Everything this love took from you? This man who doesn't deserve you despises you and makes you feel like you're not a part of them." He licked his lips and moved even closer, but Daenerys stayed still, undaunted. "Dany. That's what he calls you. But to me you're Daenerys. A whole in itself. Not a part of everything you are. Can't you see it?"

Dany raised an eyebrow.

"Jon is the man I love. The father of my children."

The remainder of it obviously annoyed him but he did not relent. 

"He is your misfortune, Daenerys. The reason for all your suffering."

She held his gaze for a moment longer before laughing and looking away.

"Even if," she started to say, "Even if for a moment your words make sense, you can't erase what's already been done. My feelings for him and the family we've created."

Daario took a long breath. Her words only made him stubborn.

"Here you are in danger. You and your children."

"What?"

"Discontent grows by the day. They are not the Dothraki who follow the force. They like their old ways. They want that back."

Did he know something that they didn't? In the past, Daario had been quick to notice the discontent that she overlooked.

"Please. See reason, my Queen. For you and for your children, I offer you this: come with me," his hand caught hers, that inertly allowed itself to be grasped, "Come with me. I will keep you safe."

Dany made no move to pull away from him, even though she wanted to do so. Her mind was spinning over his words of warning, a fear that she had made her own in the past few days.

Then behind them, the presence of something else made itself known. A low growl that reminded her of Drogon, but less strident and closer.

Ghost and his pack emerged from the forest, in attacking position and with fangs out.

"If I were you, Daario," Daenerys said, pulling her hand away, "I'd think better of it before leaving the safety of the Wolves Den again. The name is not just a name, it is a warning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter will be up this week most likely. Unless something catastrophic happens which is totally plausible these days.


	18. Ameron of House Targaryen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL. I'm just posting this basically to force myself to finish the next chapter here.

**Jon**

"Baby!"

Dalya bounced her way onto the bed but she was stopped in time by Jon's grasp, who scooped her up and nestled her with him when he sat next to Dany.

"Be gentle, sweetling. He's tiny," his wife whispered in a voice still worn from the effort of giving birth.

Jorian and Missella had both settled cross-legged above the trunk at the foot of their bed.

"How long until he grows to hold a sword, Papa?" Jorian asked him.

"It will take some time," Jon replied, smiling at his son's impatience to experience all those wonderful things that come from having a brother. "You better start training to master it when it's time for him to learn."

Jorian twitched his mouth, unsatisfied. 

"I thought he would have my hair!" he protested. 

Jon and Dany both laughed at the same time. The baby making soft gurgling sounds as he suckled her teat.

"Shh, you don't want to wake him up. He cries like a newborn calf!" Missella scolded her brother.

"What a nice comparison." His wife frowned in amusement.

"He has our hair, Papa!" she continued commenting, happily.

Jon looked at the babe. He barely had any hair on his head but there were traces of a clear shade of brown that would only darkening and was a stark contrast to the silver tuft he bore in his mind of Dalya a few years ago.

"Yes, he does," Jon said almost too proudly.

"And what _is is is_ he going to be called?" Dalya asked, in her hurried way of dragging the words with her high-pitched voice while with a hand on top of the baby's head, she cooed him as he fed. 

Daenerys gazed at him with a knowing smile.

"Ameron," Jon replied, mesmerized seeing the image of his family and feeling overwhelmed by a sudden rush of joy in its truest form.

"Ameron of House Targaryen," Dany added.

Jon breathed in sharply.

It took him unexpectedly but there was certainty in Dany's gaze and that was something he only saw when she professed love for their children or for him.

 _"They don't know about anything at all. I never even told them they were supposed to have a father. Least who they are and where they come from."_ Those where her words when she confessed to him her misgivings regarding their identity. Yet since Dalya was born, Jon had decided to embrace who they were and what that make.

"Are we all of House Targaryen?" Jorian inquired. 

Dany looked up to him. Eyes questioning and hopeful. 

"Yes, we are," Jon said, looking back at her with an unbreakable oath in his mind in his heart to his one true family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the age of the kiddos by the end of the next chapter. 
> 
> \- Jorian (8) b. 305 ac
> 
> \- Missella(8) b. 305 ac
> 
> \- Dalya (3) b.310 ac
> 
> \- Ameron (newborn) b.313 ac

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently here is where writers tell the readers to let them know what they think of the chapter but in my case, it is more like, if you have something to say, just say it.


End file.
